
Class _L.t)- 7^> s.T-- 

Book ^ "^ - ./- 

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SPINOZA AS EDUCATOR 



BY 

WILLIAM LOUIS RABENORT, A. M., Ph. D. 



TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUI\IBL\ UNIVERSITY 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION, NO. 38 



PUBLLSHEO BY 

V^^miftrs (Hollrgr, (Ctilumbia ^ittopraitg 

NEW YORK CITY 

1911 



V.w'i, 



^i"^" 



Copyright, 1911, by William Louis Rabenort 



PRESS OF 

FRANK H. EVORY & CO. 

ALBANY, N. Y. 






SPINOZA 

How met tlie Orient and Occident 

To cast the crystal for Spinoza's brain ! 
Hebraic prophet, subtile Moor of Spain; 

The Schoolman's lore, Renaissance discontent; 

Mystic and craftsman ; scientist intent 
On human life, and sage without a stain, 
Of classic calm in persecution's pain ; 

Like sand before the fusing flame, they blent. 

Through this true lens, polished by Nature's hand 
We look at past rainbow passion to the sphere 

Where reason's achromatic ray shines clear 
On things eternal ; whence we understand 

How to love God, — the true philosophy, — 
One way to virtue and tranquillity. 

February, 1909. 



PREFACE 

After three and a half centuries Benedict Spinoza is more than 
ever an intellectual force to be reckoned with. His influence 
upon his own and immediately succeeding generations was of the 
slightest, and even when the teachings of the Jew of Amsterdam 
were no longer shunned, they were still misunderstood, and by 
none more profoundly than by Herder, Lessig, Goethe, and the 
others of that group of enthusiastic admirers which constitutes 
perhaps Spinoza's most obvious influence upon civilization. In 
the History of Philosophy he looms in majestic solitude, a peak 
but remotely joined to the adjacent heights. It is therefore not 
surprising to find his name conspicuously absent from the roll of 
philosophers who figure in the History of Education. 

The bibliography at the end of this essay is evidence of the 
interest manifested in Spinoza at the present time. Professor 
William James quoted him as an authority on psychology, and 
in the preface to his "Analytic Psychology," Dr. G. F. Stout 
acknowledges his pre-eminent indebtedness to Spinoza. 

The attempt made in the following pages to point out the 
educational implications of Spinoza's philosophy seemed to 
necessitate introductory summaries and interpretations which 
might have been omitted were the foundations of Spinoza's 
philosophy familiar to the students of education into whose hands 
this volume may come. The essay might then have been wholly 
devoted to the more practical if not more congenial task of dis- 
cussing intensively one or another of the problems briefly treated 
in the final chapter. A fuller exposition of each of these topics 
would do much to clarify current educational thought, and it is 
hoped that the bearing of Spinoza's philosophy upon education 
will attract the labor of other hands. 

It is believed that further and broader studies will justify the 
conclusions herein expressed. But however that may be, it seems 
probable that a refutation of Spinoza's theories can be validly 
offered only by one who tests them by actually ordering his life 



vi Preface 

bv them, for a while at least, and studying them while making the 
trial. It was thus that Spinoza attained to his beliefs, and his 
works constitute his autobiography. It is in view of this fact that 
he is characterized in the last chapter of the essay as an experi- 
mental philosopher. 

As this essay is primarily a contribution to the theory of educa- 
tion and only indirectly a study in philosophy it seems proper that 
the references should be to the English versions of Spinoza's works 
most readily accessible, namely, Elwes' translation of the Chief 
Works, in the Bohn edition, " The Principles of Descartes' Philo- 
sophy," and the Cogitata Metaphysica, translated by Halbert 
Hains Britain, and A. Wolf's excellent translation of the Short 
Treatise. The excerpts quoted in the text are also from these 
translations. The essay itself is, however, based upon the defini- 
tive Latin text of Van Vloten and Land to which any scholar who 
may honor it by a critical study will of course have no difficulty 
in referring. 

I avail myself of this opportunity to acknowledge my indebted- 
ness to Dr. W. H. Kilpatrick for the verification of certain 
references cited, and to Professor John Angus MacVannel for 
inspiration and encouragement extending now over many years. 

W. R. 
April, 191 1. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 



PAGE 

I The Possibility of EducatiOxNt i 

II The EleiMents of Human Nature 14 

III The Supremacy of the Intellect 39 

IV The Complications of Personality 51 

V The Criteria of Education 62 

Bibliography g5 



" No man can better display the power of his skill and dis- 
position, than in so training men, that they come at last to live 
under the dominion of their own reason." 

Ethics, Part IV, Appendix IX. 



SPINOZA AS EDUCATOR 

CHAPTER I 

THE POSSIBILITY OF EDUCATION 

The reader, familiar with Spinoza's writings and recalling the 
all too scanty story of his life, may wonder, not without warrant, 
at the title of this essay. Should he contend that Spinoza cared 
little for education and less for children, he will not find Spinoza's 
life wanting in episodes nor his books lacking in tenets to support 
his assertion. 

Since Pestalozzi, childhood has become the touchstone of educa- 
tion. Spinoza had little interest in children. He has little to say 
about them, and from the collocutions in which they are men- 
tioned, it is evident that he esteemed them but slightly. He 
admits that they rank higher than slaves ; ^ yet speaking of the 
silly behavior ascribed to ghosts he can think of no stronger con- 
demnation than to say that they act like madmen, fools, and 
children. 2 But all educators are not Pestalozzis nor all philoso- 
phers, Froebels. Education is broader than childhood, and 
Spinoza's interest may have been for adults. Were this so. it 
would doubtless be apparent in his attitude toward his neighbors. 
There is, for example, his rejoinder to his landlady, the Widow 
Van Velden or perhaps Vrow Van der Spyck. Aware of his 
eminence as a critic of the Bible, she asked him whether she could 
be saved in the religion she professed. He replied, " Your Re- 
ligion is a very good one ; you need not look for another, nor 
doubt that you may be saved in it, provided, whilst you apply 
yourself to Piety, you live at the same time a peaceable and quiet 
Life." 3 Why this failure to proselyte when the questioner gave 

^ Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, p. 206. 

2 Correspondence, letter LVI, cf. Ethics, pt. II, prop. 49, scli. IV, prop. 
30. sch. 

' Colerus, in Pollock; Spinoza, His Life and Philosophy, appendix, p. 395, 
cf. Wolf, Spinoza, His Life and Treatise on God and Man, p. XCIX. 



2 Spinoza as Educator 

him an opening? Why did he not tell of his own way to salva- 
tion, " by almost all men neglected ? " ^ The fear of arousing the 
authorities, from which he was seldom free, can hardly have de- 
terred him, for his landlady was his friend and had more to gain 
from his safety than from his persecution. He may have thought 
her incapable of attaining to the heights where his thought made 
its abode, and so refrained from disturbing her faith. He may 
have thought as those who have departed from orthodoxy so 
often do, that the faith that lives in honest doubt is not capable of 
inculcation. That however is not the attitude of the typical 
teacher ; was it Spinoza's ? 

Spinoza had an opportunity to become a professional teacher. 
He declined the Professorship of Philosophy at Heidelberg.^ He 
tells Fabritius who offered him the place on behalf of Charles 
Lewis, the Elector Palatine, " It has never been my wish to teach 
in public " ; and he gives several characteristic reasons : ( i ) Un- 
certainty as to how frank he could be in his lectures without 
disturbing the established religion; (2) reluctance to arouse in- 
evitable controversy; and above all, (3) unwillingness to abandon 
philosophical research in order to teach young students. One is 
tempted to interpret the last reason as meaning that he felt 
surer of the benefits he would gain from his own studies than of 
those he might confer by directing the studies of others ; not from 
lack of confidence in his command of the subject nor his fitness as 
to method, but rather from his somewhat low estimate of human 
ability, which he did not hesitate to express.^ 

His experiences with private pupils were not such as to make 
him eager to teach. John Casearius' lodged with Spinoza and 
talked with him on the best of subjects, at dinner, at supper, and 
during their walks. In spite of his esteem for the young man's 
talents, Spinoza was reserved with him ; he did not wish to teach 
him his own opinions openly.« So he dictated to him instead the 
second part of Descartes', "Principles, treated Geometrically," 
together with some of the chief points treated of in metaphysics. 

Spinoza's reluctance to impose upon another the doctrines upon 
the formulation of which he spent his thought and which were 

* Ethics, pt. V, prop. 47, note. 

^ Correspondence, letters LIII and LIV. 

5 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, p. 78. 

nCuno Fischer, Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, vol. 2, p. 145. 

* Correspondence, letter IX. 



The Possibility of Education 3 

what he chiefly had to offer liis pupils, appears from his correspon- 
dence with Albert Burgh." Burgh became a convert to the Roman 
church twelve years after he studied with Spinoza. He then 
wrote a letter,^" fervent, well intentioned, breathing his esteem 
for his former teacher, but showing a misconception of Spinoza's 
doctrine. Burgh recalls, it is true, what Spinoza terms the chief 
aim of the Tractatits Thcologico-Politicns ; namely, " to dis- 
tinguish between religion and philosophy," ' ^ but only to condemn 
the distinction. " The book with the impious title,"^^ Burgh calls 
it. His confusion of eternity with infinitely long duration, his 
anthropomorphic deity, and his repeated questions, plainly more 
than rhetorical, as to the certainty of Spinoza's knowledge, are 
all proofs that Spinoza's instruction had gone for naught. Spinoza 
was deeply moved, yet his first impulse was to let Burgh go his 
own way •,^^ " to leave your letter unanswered, thinking that time 
and experience wall assuredly be of more avail than reasoning, to 
restore you to yourself and your friends." This is sound common 
sense, but we are prone to regard the spirit of the teacher as some- 
thing else, perhaps something more, something akin to that of 
the shepherd who leaves the ninety and nine that are safe in the 
fold and fares forth to seek the one that has gone astray. Had 
Spinoza been keen for teaching he would not have needed urging 
by acquaintances to persuade him " not to fail in the offices of a 
friend," and to endeavor to recall to Burgh the reasonings and 
arguments which erstwhile had won his approval. 

Although the first editors tried to eliminate from the " Corre- 
spondence " every personal paragraph, we find other instances 
therein of Spinoza's disinclination to teach. Take the correspon- 
dence with William de Blyenberg,^'* for example. Beginning 
December 12, 1664, with expressions of mutual esteem and pro- 
fessions by Spinoza of his willingness to instruct, by the following 
March the interchange had not only become acrimonious, but had 
elicited from the courteous but outspoken Spinoza the statement ^^ 
that it was waste of time to try to teach one who had Blyenbergh's 

' Kuno Fischer, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 139, 168, etc. 
^"Correspondence, letter LXXIII. 
"Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, p. 183. 
^2 Correspondence, loc. cit. 
"Ibid., letter LXXIV. 

" Ibid., letters XXXI - XXXVIII. 

15 Ibid., letter XXXVI. 



4 Spino:za as Educator 

manner of thinking^. It is plain that having discovered what a 
Herbartian would call Blyenbergh's apperceptive mass, Spinoza 
discontinued his efforts to instruct him. There is no attempt to 
establish the seeker upon the basis that Spinoza demanded as the 
foundation for a friendship ; merely a regretful recognition that 
this basis, which would have obligated Spinoza to something like 
teaching, is absent, and a polite severance of all relations. 

With his writings it is not different. One finds no refuge in 
the thought that he rejected opportunities for personal instruction 
to purvey for the multitude who might read his books. He was 
not anxious for wide circulation. His manuscripts were copied 
only with his reluctant consent. The Ethics, his most im- 
portant work was posthumous, although he sought, though not 
diligently, to publish it. The most important work published 
during his lifetime, the Tractatns Theologico-Politicns, was 
avowedly for the few. After commending it to the Philosophic 
Reader, he says : 

" To the rest of mankind I care not to commend my treatise, for 

I cannot expect that it contains anything to please them : 

Therefore the multitude, and those of like passions with the multi- 
tude, I ask not to read my book ; nay, I would rather that they 
should utterly neglect it, than that they should misinterpret it after 
their wont. They would gain no good themselves, and might 
prove a stumbling-block to others, whose philosophy is hampered 
by the belief that Reason is a mere handmaid to Theology, and 
whom I seek in this work especially to benefit." '^^ 

But every one of these instances that may be quoted as evidence 
for Spinoza's slight regard for education testifies with at least 
equal force for the other side. If the quotation from the preface 
to the Theological-Political Treatise shows that the masses are 
incapable of learning philosophy it proves also that Spinoza be- 
lieved there were at least a few persons who could profit by its 
teachings. A consideration of the cases of the Widow Van 
Velden, of Burgh, of Casearius, and of Blyenbergh, shows 
that Spinoza believed in the possibility of education in some 
sense even though he hesitated to undertake the education of 
either of these three. He would not teach Casearius his own 
opinions, but he took him as a pupil, taught him physics, wrote 

i^Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, p. ii. 



The Possibility of Education 5 

for him the " Principles of Descartes' Philosophy," ^~ and 
looked for an increase of years to amend his youthful faults. ^^ 
Similarly, Spinoza did not refuse at first to instruct Blyenbergh ; 
only when he found his mind closed to certain kinds of argument. 
Otherwise he would have admitted him to the standing of Olden- 
bergh, De Vries, Tschirnhausen, and the other acquaintances who 
thronged his modest house, sometimes inconveniently, and to 
whom he gave freely of his time and strength, inviting them to 
draw upon him for more help when they found his expositions 
obscure. His reticence toward Vrow Van Velden becomes ex- 
plicable when we consider his differentiation of religion and 
philosophy. He believed that the cardinal principle of the former 
is obedience to God ^^ as shown by one's manner of living ; 20 
that it has nothing to do with learning 2 ^ save in so far as knowl- 
edge is identical with the springs of behavior ; 22 that religion 
is knowledge of God only in the sense that deeds express knowl- 
edge, as a man who can build a house is said to know carpentry. 
It makes no difference whether a person comes to his piety 
rationally or not.^^ Spinoza had found the way to God by the 
light of reason, but its direct rays were too bright for most 
men ; 2* they had to let the reflected light of revelation -^ guide 
them. Illum.inated by these facts, Spinoza's words to the widow 
have a deeper significance. He gave her the information she 
sought in phrases she could understand and which exactly ex- 
pressed his belief ; assuming thereby that so far she was capable 
of education. But he did not try to make a philosopher of her. 
That was a task beyond them both ; moreover her piety could not 
in that wav be improved. 

n 

This examination of Spinoza's personal attitude toward edu- 
cation may serve as introduction to a consideration of the place 
education occupies in his philosophical system. It seems per- 
tinent to inquire whether the attitude depicted in the preceding 

1^ Freudenthal, Spinoza, sein Leben unci sein Lehre, vol. i, p. 114. 

^* Correspondence, letter XXVII. 

18 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, p. 176. 

2»Ibid., p. 187. 

21 Ibid., p. 186. 

22 Ibid., p. 179. 

23 Ibid., p. 180. 
2< Ibid., p. 28q. 

25 Ibid., pp. 78, 91. 



6 Spinoza as Educator 

paragraphs is in harmony with Spinoza's theory. And since 
Spinoza gives no systematic or expHcit treatment of education, 
our task involves the construction of the theory of education which 
is impHed in his philosophy. 

The student who accepts the classification of the text-books and 
calls Spinoza a pantheist, may well question how education even 
with the limitations suggested in the preceding paragraphs can 
comport with Pantheism. If God and nature be the same what 
undertaking could be more absurd than education; what more 
presumptuous than a project to change God for the better ; to give 
a finer texture or a better fit to Das Gottheits lebendiges Kleid. 
In this simpler form the charge of pantheism was made against 
the Tractatus Theologico-Politiciis, by contemporaries, and denied 
by Spinoza.2^ It would be strange, if the charge were true, that 
he should afterward say,^''' " We may .... conceive the 
whole of nature as one individual, whose parts, that is, all bodies, 
vary in infinite ways, without any change in the individual as a 
whole." His unhesitating utterance shows he felt no contradic- 
tion, and none existed, for anything made up of parts, even to 
infinity, lacked for Spinoza the mark of the absolute and eternal. -° 

But there is a higher Pantheism. It goes as far beyond the 
common conception spoken of in the preceding paragraph, as 
that transcends the etymology of the word. It is defined as the 
philosophy which conceives of God as- the only independent 
being.-'' Spinoza says that he means by God, a substance which 
is in itself and of which a conception can be formed independently 
of every other conception.-"'^ He says, also, that from the neces- 
sity of the divine nature must follow an infinite number of 
infinite things,^^ all of which are in God, for without Him nothing 
can be nor be conceived. 3- By these technical tokens Spinoza is 

26 Correspondence, letter XXXI. 
27^ Ethics, II, prop. 13, Lemma VII note. 
28 Ethics, pt. I, prop. 15, note. 

2^ Century Dictionary, cf. Baldwin, Dictionary of P.sychology and Phil- 
osophy, also Murray, Dictionary of the English Language. 

30 Ethics, pt. I, def. IIL VI. 

31 Ibid., prop. 16. 
32Loc. cit., prop. 15. 

Note. Tlie translation of " infinita " in this proposition presents difficul- 
ties and Fullcrton, Elwes, and Smith, each translates it differently. The 
rendering of the latter is adopted as maintaining the obvious sense of the 
word and as most consistent with the interpretation of Spinoza's doctrine 
adhered to in this essay. 



The Possibility of Education 7 

made a pantheist. This is not the place for an exhaustive dis- 
cussion of the matter, but a few facts about Spinoza's doctrine of 
the " nature of God and his manner of regarding, and providing 
for things " ^^ may be presented in this connection least our 
acceptance of this definition as a fair statement of Spinoza's 
belief, be altogether too superficial. For the relation between 
the independent Deity and dependent nature has in Spinoza's 
philosophy some remarkable, not to say peculiar characteristics. 
The things that God has created dififer from him : ( i ) They exist 
apart from himself ;2"* (2) they have qualities which he does not 
possess;''^ (3) God does not pertain to their essence i^'*^ (4) things 
can be imagined, but God cannot.^^ (5) Moreover the proposition 
quoted above ^^ refers to infinite things and not to finite things, 
for thus the word " infinita " is most directly translated. If this 
unique dependence of nature on God be pantheism let the his- 
torians of philosophy make the most of it. If custom has made 
it imperative to keep Spinozism and Pantheism synonymous, the 
only scientific procedure is to study Spinoza's works, summarize 
his theories, and exhibit the result labelled " Pantheism." ^^ And 
the students of education also may search the pages of Spinoza's 
books to ascertain whether in his system, be it pantheistic or not, 
nature may have possibilities of education, although God does 
not. 

As for the limitations which we seemed to find Spinoza recog- 
nizing within nature in his own practice of education we may at 
once inquire whether or not they are due solely to the fact that 
human power cannot control all the educative agencies which 
reach back into the pupil's ancestry and abroad into every circum- 
stance of climate and society. The most direct approach to an 
answer is by an examination of Spinoza's metaphysical concepts 
of possibility, contingency, necessity, and impossibility. Two of 
the concepts, necessity and impossibility, have universal signifi- 
cance. They apply to God and the whole of nature in which man 
is but a speck. The other two, possibility and contingency, have 

33 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, p. 104. 
3^ Cogitata Metaphysica, pt. II, ch. VII, p. 153. 
35 Correspondence, letter XXXVI. 
3* Ethics, pt. II, prop. 10, cor. note." 
^ Correspondence, letter LX. 

38 Supra, p. 6, ref. 31, cf., also Short Treatise, p. 142, and Ethics, V, 
prop. 24. 
38 Britain, Introduction to the Principles of Descartes' Philosophy, p. i. 



8 Spinoza as Educator 

meaning for mankind only ; applied to God or any eternal thing, 
they are nonsense. Those things are necessary that follow from 
the nature of God and those are impossible that contradict it. 
The necessary is that for which a different existence is impossible ; 
and the impossible is that which necessarily does not exist. For 
example, the diagonals of a square bisect each other necessarily ; 
if they did not a square would not be a square but something else. 
On the other hand a circular square cannot exist, it is an im- 
possibility. So the whole of nature, the system of natural laws, 
follows from the nature of God. If motion were ever retarded 
without cause, or if two objects perceived together no longer 
tended to recall one another, God would have a different nature. 
But so long as God remains unalterable, whatever comes to pass 
could not be otherwise. Moreover, it is contrary to the Nature 
of God that there should ever be a centaur or a hen that lays 
golden eggs. Thus determinism is not the antithesis of libertinism 
but of inconsistency. Free will there is in the sense that a man 
has power to tell the truth, if he wishes, but not that he has 
power to be mad or delirious ^^ at will. God, like everything 
else, freely acts out his own nature, but God cannot nod his head 
and awake the thunder, as Jupiter was fabled to do. He has no 
head to nod. 

" Things could not have been brought into being by God in any 
manner or in any order different from that which has in fact 
obtained." ^^ 

By this criterion, education is in harmony with the universe ; it 
does not clash with other natural phenomena, except as such oppo- 
sition may express God's will. In no sense can it clash with God's 
will. If we choose to call such a process education as that by 
which a colt learns to eat grass, education is obviously necessary. 
For this is one of the things that follows from being a horse. 

" And we shall be able more easily to understand this, if we 
reflect that when we say, that a man can do what he will with his 
own, this authority must be limited not only by the power of the 
agent but by the capacity of the object. If, for instance, I say 
that I can rightfully do what I will with this table, I do not cer- 
tainly mean that I have the right to make it eat grass." "^^ 

^''Tractatus Politicus, p. 304. 
*^ Ethics, pt. I, prop. 2>2>- 
*2Tractatus Politicus, p. 310. 



The Possibility of Education 9 

Education is thus far put beyond human interference. The 
teacher must go with the tide whose flow is determined by the 
configuration of the universe. Spinoza has a way of using illus- 
trations about which there can be no question. As a pedagogical 
device nothing could be more emphatic. But there may be con- 
ceptions as to the nature of education quite as impossible as 
Spinoza's illustration, though so subtile that we do not readily 
detect the contradictions to natural law which they involve. Such 
would doubtless have been Spinoza's criticism of the educational 
theories of his contemporary John Locke, had he lived to know 
Locke's writings on education, which did not however appear until 
twenty years after Spinoza's death. A tabula rasa would not 
have appealed to Spinoza as an adequate appellation for the mind, 
for his conception of the nature of mind, as we shall see, was 
totally different. He would doubtless have pronounced a tabula 
rasa as an impossibility. 

Although that whose nature involves a contradiction cannot 
exist, all the things that are consistent with the nature of God do 
not exist. Non-existence is not prima facie evidence of impossi- 
bility. Whether a thing exists or not depends on whether or not 
there is a cause why it should exist. In the case of things — not 
so with God — the cause must have its cause and so on in infinite 
regress. If there is not a definite cause to make a thing exist, it 
will remain non-existent. Thus it is " impossible for us who have 
not the habitual use of the (Ancient Hebrew) language and have 
lost the precise meaning of its phraseology," " to find a method 
which would enable us to gain a certain knowledge of all the 
statements in Scripture." ■^^ In concluding therefore whether it 
be impossible to secure a given efifect, in education as in any enter- 
prise, we must first examine the essence, that is the nature or 
capacity of the object, to ascertain whether the desired effect be 
contrary to that nature, and then discover whether the failure to 
get the effect be due to the absence of an efficient cause. 

We do not know everything,'** Absolute and eternal knowl- 
edge is contrary to human nature. So there are many things 
which we can neither pronounce necessary nor declare impossible, 
because we do not understand their nature. We cannot define 

*3 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, p. 108 and note thereto, p. 270. Observe 
the colloquial use of impossible. 
^ Cogitata Metaphysica, p. 172. 



10 Spinoza as Educator 

them because their essence is unknown. The existence of such 
things is said to be possible, the assertion constituting a confession 
of ignorance on the part of the speaker. Other things there are 
whose essence we understand to be not impossible ; and yet we 
do not know whether there be any cause for their existence. If 
we knew that there was a cause we should have to say they were 
necessary, for they would have to exist if there were a cause ; if 
on the contrary we knew that there was no cause for their exist- 
ence, we should call them impossible, for without an efficient 
cause they could not exist. But so long as we do not know 
whether or not there be such a cause, we say of such things that 
they are contingent. In view of the fact that God is the cause 
both of the essence and the existence of things, Spinoza did not 
emphasize this distinction between things possible and things con- 
tingent. Even in the Cogitata Metaphysica where the distinc- 
tion is first made, he admits that the terms might be interchanged 
and in the Ethics, he calls both aspects of our ignorance as to 
the necessity or impossibility of things, the contingent. For his 
eye was on things eternal, and phraseology expressing as it does 
merely the limitations of the human mind, did not cause him 
much concern. -^-^ 

It appears therefore that we must study the thing in whose 
education we are interested in all its properties and relations. 
It is also clear that whatever limitations there are will be : ( i ) 
those that pertain to the nature of the being that is trained, be it 
crystal, plant, beast, or man; (2) those that pertain to the series 
of external causes or agencies which operate in the training. 

Ill 

Professor Laurie ^"^ in his chapter on the " Possibilities and 
Limitations of Education," says that education in its highest sense 
becomes possible only when mankind attains to a consciousness of 
self ; when the attainments of the race are discerned potentially 
in each individual. To this theory Spinoza would doubtless have 
propounded the query as to the function performed in education 
by the development of consciousness of self, race, or anything 
whatsoever. He would have asked wherein the influences which 

^5 For the discussion of these terms cf. Cogitata Metaphysica, pt. I, 
ch. Ill, and Ethics, I, prop. 22,- For additional ilhistrations, cf. Tractatus 
Theologico-Pohticus, pp. no, 131, 139, 145, 155, 186, 246, 254, 268, etc., 

*^ Laurie, Institutes of Education, ch. I. 



The Possibility of Education il 

operate in education prior to or in the absence of consciousness, 
differ fundamentally from those which procure education after 
consciousness appears. He might have said of education as he 
did of desire, that whether we are conscious of it or not, it is the 
same education. That consciousness is a highly; important and 
desirable stage in the development and education of mankind, 
Spinoza would have agreed. He deemed the extension of con- 
sciousness to be the culmination of man's destiny, a very different 
theory from that proffered by Professor Laurie. 

The philosophy of education now in vogue regards the educa- 
tional process as a phase of evolution.'*''^ The development of man 
is its gospel and Froebel, its apostle. Spinoza was chiefly im- 
pressed by logical causation, by the irresistible consequences that 
follow from a thing understood, as the properties of a geometrical 
concept follow with more or less ease but with equal certainty 
when its definition is understood. But he also felt the force of 
objective causation, natura naturata.-*^ Nevertheless he did not 
postulate two series of events in the universe. That which fol- 
lows logically (objectiva) from its superior idea is the same as 
that which follows (formaliter) from its efficient cause, and 
things are arranged in but one order and connection.^^ One 
may not go so far as to call Spinoza an evolutionist, nor can his 
failure to recognize that process detract from his credit ; but it is 
important to observe that there is nothing in Spinozistic deter- 
minism much as it may dift'er from that which excludes freedom 
from God, that is inimical to evolution. As the theory of the 
persistence of force is not at variance with evolution,-''^'' so 
Spinoza's doctrine of essence, eternal and indestructible ^^ makes 
no discord with our daily experiences of change and growth. 
Man as a human organism is produced, altered, and destroyed, 
but not so far as he is extended substance ; ^2 likewise water.^' 
Furthermore. Spinoza sees order and regulation in all causal 
changes. -'■•^ One form cannot be changed into another indiscrim- 

*'' Hanus, Educational Aims and Ideals, pp. 16-20. Davidson, History of 
Education, p. i. Monroe, History of Education, p. 651. 
^ Ethics, pt. I, prop. 28, 29. 
*^ Ethics, pt. II, prop. 7. 
^ Spencer, First Principles, ch. VI. 
siCogitata Metaphysica, pt. II, ch. XII. 
S2 Ibid., loc. cit. 
"Ethics, pt. I, prop. 15, note. 
^ Ethics, pt. I, prop. 8, note ii. 



12 Spinosa as Educator 

inately. Moreover, when he says that man is produced, he 
has a distinctly ontogenic concept. " I beg you," he writes, to 
Oldenberg, " I beg you, dear friend, to bear in mind, that men are 
not created but born, and that their bodies already exist before 
birth, though under different forms." ^^ It seems plain that 
Spinoza would have had no quarrel with even spontaneous 
generation " in a definite, limited sense " meaning " the origin 
of Monera from inorganic carbon compounds." °" He would 
have insisted, however, that the germ history of a man is that of 
a man and not of a goat, even though a similar germ should 
develop into a goat, and the resemblance of germs were so close 
that one could not tell at a given stage of development into which 
animal the germ were developing. 

To the more comprehensive question, as to whether evolution 
has universal validity, Spinoza would have given a negative 
reply. We may hold either that the universe as a totality or 
unity is amenable to evolution or that it is not. If it is so 
governed, it must have developed from a prior form of which 
the principle was non-evolutionary, and be progressing toward a 
non-evolutionary universe which shall be the outgrowth and next 
stage of this evolutionary universe. It will not avail to point 
out that the evolutionary principle thus applied is still more com- 
prehensive than the past, present, and future forms of universe, 
for the all-comprehensive situation is subject to the same test 
and the same conclusion. Spinoza would doubtless have included 
evolution among the eternal laws, which neither change or begin. ^''' 
Education, however, which proceeds in part at least according to 
man-made rules designed for the well-being of the race he would 
not have so classified save in so far as these rules coincide with 
the necessary laws of the universe, the system of eternal laws 
which with him was synonymous with God. 

The fixed or non-evolutionary character of a law per se should 
be distinguished from the evolution of that law as an ens rationis. 
It is undoubtedly true that the law of evolution as a historic con- 
cept or formulation originated and has been developed, is still 
developing, through the labors of La Place, Le Conte, Marcon, 
Wallace, Darwin, Romanes, DeVries ; but, their formulations are 

55 Correspondence, letter IV. 

^ Haeckel, Evolution of Man, vol. II, p. 31. 

57 Wolf, Short Treatise, ch. XXIV, p. 139. 



The Possibility of Education 13 

not the fixed and unalterable principle whose operations they 
observe in unnumbered phenomena and which they seek to phrase. 
Spinoza, then, looked upon education as a natural process in 
harmony with the developing character of the universe. Inasmuch 
as God and nature would be different without it, it is a necessary 
phenomenon ; and since it goes on in accordance with the nature 
of the being educated it is a free activity. From a human point 
of view education is subject to the ever widening knowledge of 
the sciences which provide data for concluding whether certain 
results are consistent with the nature of that which is educated. 
Having decided that from this standpoint education is possible it 
is further incumbent upon the student of education to ascertain 
whether the agencies needed to cause education are available. 
For example, we may inquire whether the nature of man falls into 
the classes — philosophic reader and common herd — as Spinoza 
says, and then go on to ask whether the Tractatus Theologico- 
Politicus is an agency adapted to secure the end for which 
Spinoza designed it. Our general conclusion is therefore that in 
spite of the limitations which Spinoza recognized as in Burgh, 
who was too young, and his landlady, who was too old, to learn 
philosophy, as well as in Blyenbergh whose prejudices hindered 
him from learning it, he yet regarded the study of philosophy 
as a proper form of human effort. The twofold limitations which 
he recognized afford philosophic basis between learning and teach- 
ing, each of these processes being again subject to mutual limita- 
tion according as we consider the capacity of the object or the 
presence of causes to put the activity into effect. 



CHAPTER II 

THE ELEMENTS OF HUMAN NATURE 

In seeking the principles upon which Spinoza might have based 
his theory of education, we can do no better than accept the hint 
given in the Emcndationc. " It is necessary," says Spinoza, in 
that uncompleted work, " to have an exact knowledge of the nature 
which we desire to perfect, and also know as much as possible of 
nature in general." The first of these requirements will be recog- 
nized, as in consonance with that examination of the nature of a 
thing which in the preceding chapter we found to be prerequisite 
to pronouncing upon its educability. The correspondence of the 
second is less obvious, and a consideration of its significance 
may be postponed to the last chapter of the essay. In this and 
the two subsequent chapters we confine ourselves to a discussion 
of the nature of human beings and their place in the cosmos 
according to Spinoza's philosophy. This chapter comprises : ( i ) 
The concepts of essence, existence, and causality as they apply to 
man; (2) the theory of substance and attributes from the same 
point of view; (3) the relation between man's mind and body; 
(4) the elaboration of Spinoza's theory of body; and (5) a study 
of those facts commonly regarded as mental but which Spinoza 
deemed modifications of the human body, namely, imagination, 
memory, general notions, opinion, and emotion. 

I 

The fact that there are human beings in the world is the 
outcome of the divine nature.^ So is the nature of human beings 
itself 2 as well as the conditions under which they exist, e. g., the 
laws of thought ^ that regulate human thinking, the laws of 



1 Ethics, pt. I, prop. 25. 

2 Ibid., pt. I, prop. 17, cor. 2, note; ibid., pt. II, prop 
2 Ibid., pt. II, prop. r. 



1. 10, cor. 



The Elements of Human Nature 15 

matter ■* with which human acts must accord, and the law of 
causation ^ to which both mind ^ and body" are subject. It must 
be emphasized at the outset that this dependence of human nature 
upon God does not predicate nor include the creation of individual 
human beings by God. The latter are finite things and do not 
follow from the infinite nature of God. Individual men are finite 
creatures wdiose origin and behavior are ascertained by a study of 
mankind. In other words, thought, extension, causation, exist- 
ence, and human essence are five of the infinite consequences of 
the nature of God. 

I. The essence of anything is its nature r"* it is that which makes 
the thing what it is. The essence of man makes us men instead 
of horses or anything else that has a different essence.*^ " I con- 
sider," says Spinoza, " as belonging to the essence of a thing 
that, which being given, the thing is necessarily given also, and, 
which being removed, the thing is necessarily removed also ; in 
other words that without which the thing, and which itself without 
the thing, can neither be nor be conceived." '^^ 

The important part of the definition, as Spinoza explains in the 
tenth proposition of the First Book, is the statement that the 
essence cannot be conceived without the thing, thus distinguishing 
between essences and substances from which they follow deduct- 
ively.^^ Essence is synonymous with the subjective idea and truth. 
Essences are eternal truths. As such they are not divisible and 
neither arithmetical nor grammatical number is applicable to 
them. Hence all human beings are alike in respect to their 
essence,^2 although as will appear, they differ in other respects. 
The study of essences and their explanation through their proxi- 

* Ibid., pt. II, prop. 2. 

5 Ibid., pt. I, prop. 28. 

^ Ibid., pt. I, prop. 32. 

'' Ibid., pt. I, appendix, p. 80. 

8 De Intcllectus Emendatione, pp. 35, 39; Ethics, pt. I, prop. 11, note; 
Cogitata Metaphysica, pt. I, ch. 3, p. 126. 

9 Ethics, pt. IV, prop. 37. note i ; III, prop. S7 note. cf. for " Essence of a 
Circle." De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 35. " Essence of The Bible." 
Tractatiis Theologico-Politicus, pp. 112, 172. "Essence of a State," Tracta- 
tus Politicus, ch. X, sec. 9. " Essence of Existence," Cogitata Metaphysica, 
pt. I, ch. X, p. 130. " Essenc? of Body," Ethics, pt. II, after Lemma III ; 
ibid., pt. II, prop. 24; ibid., pt. IV, prop. 39. 

'"Ibid., pt. II, def. 2. 

"Ibid., pt. II, prop. 10, cor. note. 

^^De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 14. 



i6 Spinoca as Educator 

mate causes lies in the province of philosophy.^^ Philosophy thus 
practices the art of definition.^^ 

The essence of man is his will to live.^^ Since will and under- 
standing ^re identified,^^ man's essence is the same as his ration- 
ality.^'^ The endeavor to persist in his own being, in which man's 
essence, like the essence of everything, exhibits itself, is not merely 
an anticipation of Schopenhauer. Although the latter also iden- 
tifies will and idea,^^ the meaning he attaches to both words 
differs from Spinoza's use of the same words. Schopenhauer has 
a wholly subjective theory of ideas, whereas for Spinoza the 
subject-object relation is only one and that not the fundamental 
aspect of mind. With reference to " the will to live," Schopen- 
hauer calls the expression a pleonasm for will,^^ a statement 
hardly in accord with Spinoza's theory, as the discussion in the 
next chapter will show. By substituting conatus for " will " and 
" willing," Schopenhauer's assertion, " Every man is what he is 
through his will, and his character is original, for willing is the 
basis of his nature," 2*^' could then be transposed to the opening 
paragraph of Chapter XVI of the Theological-Political Treatise. 
Indeed Spinoza's eloquent description of the struggle to exist may 
have been unknown to Schopenhauer, who perhaps like most of 
the earlier post-Kantians, knew only the Ethics. 

" As in the state of nature the man who is led by reason is most 
powerful and independent," 21 and " as the best plan of living so 
as to assure to the utmost self-preservation, is that which is 
framed according to the dictate of reason," 22 the identity of 
reason and the conatus of man is evident. The mind is something 
whose essence it is to think and which in so far as it is considered 
a sufficient cause for mental activity is called will.^^ The fact 
that man's essence is at once what makes him rational and what 
makes him put forth every effort for physical as well as mental 

^^ Cogitata Metaphysica, pt. II, ch. II, p. 121 ; De Intellectus Emendatione, 
p. 18. 

'* Ibid., p. 34- 

^^ Ethics, pt. Ill, prop. 7; prop. 9, note. 

^^ Ibid., pt. II, prop. 49, cor. 

1^ Ibid., pt. II, prop. II, 13 and 15 ; ibid., pt. V, prop. 36, cor. note. 

18 The World as Will and Idea, vol. I, bk. i, p. S- 

19 Ibid., vol. I, bk. 4, p. 354. 

20 Ibid., vol. I, bk. 4, p. 377- 

21 Political Treatise, ch. Ill, sec. 7. 

22 Ibid., ch. V, sec. i. 

23 Cogitata Metaphysica, pt. II, ch. 12, p. 173. 



The Elements of Hninmi Nature ly 

supremacy is the most fundamental principle that Spinoza's 
philosophy has to contribute to education, and to it, as the sequel 
should show, his other principles must be related. 

The essence of man is a particular thing and more " fixed " than 
any individual man. 2-* It is not a generalization and should in 
no wise be confounded with the generic concept " humanity." 
The essence of man has reality like all particular things such as 
other essences or conati; 2" triangles, cause and eflfectj^" intellect, 
will, motion, and all natural phenomena,^'^ God's understanding 
of himself ; ^s " the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune " ; -* 
and all similar infinite things that follow from the necessity of th^ 
divine nature. The essence of man is not an ens rationis like the 
abstraction " humanity." With reference to the distinctions be- 
tween nominalism and realism Spinoza was a scholastic of the 
scholastics. Universalia anti rem, in re and post re all have their 
places in his system, according as things are in God, or in the 
finite world of cause and efifect, or in the human mind. It must 
be born in mind, however, that Spinoza recognized in nature not 
only universals but mutable things, which are not particular 
things, such as we have illustrated, but are like the musician's 
iron triangle or the draughtman's triangle of vulcanite or pear- 
wood. The latter can neither be nor be conceived without the 
essence of the triangle,-''^ which is therefore to us as a universal 
in re. 

Spinoza's teaching that abstract or general notions are derived 
from particular perceptions by abstracting the element common 
to all,^^ and that consequently they are confused and unreferred 
representations of a class ^- in which the prominent characteristics 
merge and overlap and the less obvious qualities disappear ; and 
that furthermore, in consequence of this generic function, they 
comprehend more individuals than the number of those from 

^* De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 27- 

25 Ethics, pt. II, prop. 45, note. 

''^ Ibid., pt. I, prop. 17, cor. ii, note. 

'■^ Ibid., pt. I, prop. 32, cor. ii. 

28 Correspondence, letter XXIII, ibid., letter XLIX. 

23 Ethics, pt. II, final note. 

™ Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, p. 37. For this important refer- 
ence I am indebted to an unpublished essay by Professor Frederick J. E. 
Woodbridge. 

'^ Ethics, pt. II, prop. 40, note i. 

32 De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 9. 
2 



i8 Spinoza as Educator 

which they are derived ;^^ all this is quite in accord with modern 
psychology. Spinoza teaches also that the substitution of abstrac- 
tions for essences or ideas is a prolific cause of misunderstanding 
and of error. An abstraction represents nothing that exists in the 
form shown by the abstraction, and any deduction therefrom 
will involve error; whereas thinking which makes its basis upon 
essences inevitably conducts to truth. 

2. That there is such a fact as existence in the universe is due 
to the necessity of the divine nature. In this sense God is the 
cause of the existence of particular things, including man, as well 
as of their essence. But as was pointed out in the previous sub- 
division of this section of this chapter, individual men are finite 
and do not stand in the same relation to God as does this eternal 
truth of existence. Not God but parents are the efficient cause 
of a man's existence.^"* Nor is God the first cause in the human 
series or in any other. God is as much the cause for the existence 
of the last man as of Adam, and the power needed to preserve 
each man in existence is the same as that needed for his original 
creation.2^ All of this is tantamount to saying that the fact of 
existence can neither be nor be conceived without God.^** If 
there were no God nothing could exist; if God's nature did not 
involve as a principle, the existence of particular things, nothing 
could ever come into existence. As was pointed out in the first 
chapter, there are many things that do not exist ;3'^ some because 
existence is contrary to their nature and others because the cause 
needed to bring them into existence is absent.^^ And as was 
shown in the same discussion a thing will exist unless there is a 
definite cause why it does not exist. The difficulty of thinking 
about non-existent things is apparent from the note to the eighth 
proposition of the second part of the Ethica. The comprehension 
in the infinite idea of God of the ideas of particular things that 
cannot exist is, to use Spinoza's word, unique. He tries to illus- 
trate the difiference between existing things and non-existing 
things and their likeness in relation to God. The fact is however 
better stated in the Tractatus Politicits. 

'^ Ibid., p. 29. 

^* Ethics, pt. I, prop. 17, cor. 2, note. 

^5 Tractatus Politicus, ch. 2, sec. 2. 

'^ Ethics, pt. I, prop. 8, note ii. 

^^ Cogitata Metaphysica, pt. I, ch. 3, p. 126. 

38 Ibid., pt. I, ch. 3, p. 125. 



The Elements of Human Nature 19 

"Any natural thing- whatever can be just as well conceived, 
whether it exists or does not exist. As then the beginning- of the 
existence of natural things cannot be inferred from their definition, 
so neither can their continuing to exist. For their ideal essence 
is the same, after they have begun to exist, as it was before they 
existed." ^^ 

It is therefore evident that there may have been a time when 
man had no existence and such a time may come again ; and this 
may be true of any man or of the whole race, provided a cause 
operates to prevent man's existence or the cause requisite for his 
existence be lacking-.-*^ But inasmuch as man's essence is an 
eternal truth it is indestructible.-*^ When its existence ceases it 
still retains its ideal essence. 

" The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the 
body, but there remains of it something which is eternal." •*- 

3. God is the cause not only of the existence of things but of 
the conditions under which they exist, and his relation is in both 
cases the same, i. e., that of logical cause. If things exist they 
must exist in the relation of cause and effect.'*'^ God is not, how- 
ever, the first cause of any series of existence, for priority cannot 
be predicated of God. " A first cause is therefore inconceivable," 
but Spinoza would not have agreed with the grounds that 
Schopenhauer gives for this statement, namely, that there is not 
need for explaining existence by a cause, but only a coming into 
existence as an instance of change.^-* Spinoza would have said 
that Schopenhauer. understood the law, by which causality operates, 
but that this law- does not account for the presence of causality. 
He would have said that the relation of cause and effect conditions 
the existence of all things ; that things do not thus condition them- 
selves, but are conditioned to act in this relation by God.'*-'^ Cause 
and effect is therefore one of the particular things that follow 
from the nature of God. This law characterizes all of nature in 
so far as it is considered apart from God. Man as part of nature 
is subject to the law of cause and effect. Whatever happens to 

^Tractatus Politicus, ch. 2, sec. 2. 

*" Correspondence, letter XXXIX, p. 352. 

♦^Cogitata Metaphysica, pt. II, ch. XII, p. 172, 173. 

*2 Ethics, pt. V, prop. 23. 

*3 Ethics, pt. I, prop. 28. 

"The World as Will and Idea. Supplement to bk. i, ch. 4, vol. II, p. 214. 

^ Ethics, pt. I, prop. 26. 



20 Spinoza as Educator 

him must be accounted for by an antecedent occurrence. But in so 
far as man is considered in his relation to God, his present state is 
not the cause of any future state."**^ In relation to the rest of 
nature, however, an adequate cause will be found for every effect, 
and there is nothing from which some effect does not follow. 

II 

The way in which Spinoza envisaged thought marks his chief 
divergence from Descartes.'*'^ Spinoza recognized in nature an 
infinite power of thinking.^^ Thought is not identical with human 
consciousness, but is conceived objectively. From contemplating 
this cognitive aspect of nature, he came to regard it as something 
that exists of itself and hence attributed it to God. From the 
nature of thought follow deductively its subordinate classes. The 
idea or understanding is the most general form and those that are 
still more limited, such as will, the emotions, imagination, and the 
like, can neither be nor be conceived without the idea.^*^ Finite 
thought has no existence apart from particular ideas ^" nor is will 
anything but an ens rationis, a general name for particular voli- 
tions.^^ And what is said of thought is to be understood of mind, 
for the two are synonymous. 

Extension — matter — whatever is corporeal — is conceivable with- 
out thought as thought is conceivable independent of extension. 
Pondering on the nature of matter, or extension Spinoza came to 
regard it as a totality whose beginning is in itself, or rather it is 
without beginning or end and therefore necessarily existent.^^ 
Hence extension also is attributed to God. Besides thought and 
extension he could find nothing that must be attributed to 
God ; nothing else that he investigated was of such nature that 
after he understood it, it became impossible for him to think of it 
except as existing. As for the two attributes that he had found, 
he was not forced, it is true, to think of either thought or exten- 
sion, or he might think of either and neglect the other, but if he 

^^Cogitata Metaphysica, pt. I, ch. I, p. 142; ibid., pt. II, ch. XI, p. 168. 
^'' Cogitata Metaphysica, prolegomenon, pp. 13, 14. 
^^ Correspondence, letter XV, p. 292. 
*^ Ethics, pt. II, axiom III. 

^ Ibid., pt. II, prop. 48, note, ibid., pt. II, prop. 49, demonstration of 
corollary. 
^^ Correspondence, letter II, p. 279. 
52 Ibid., letter XXIX, p. 322. 



The Elements of Human Nature 21 

did think of thought or of extension he tliought of them as 
existing and otherwise he could not think of them ; their respective 
essences involved existence. So he concluded that although 
thought and extension could not exhaust the characteristics of 
God, they comprehend all that man knows of him. - 

Before examining into the nature of the attributes of God it may 
add to our confidence in Spinoza's conclusions to note the absence 
of justification for the suspicion that he based his system upon an 
abstraction of substance and that he smuggled into this concept 
after the manner of a prestidigitator all that he afterward deduced 
therefrom. To this end it is more profitable to think his thoughts 
after him and to note how he viewed the problem than to examine 
the structure of the Ethics in which he thought to marshal 
his conclusions in systematic form though hampered by the geo- 
metric method of presentation. It is plain that his thinking did not 
begin with substance as the treatment of that concept in the 
Cogitata and in the Emendatione shows. In the Prolegomenon 
to the Principia of Descartes we have quite as clear a clue to 
Spinoza's course of thought as to that of Descartes, but two pass- 
ages in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus are the most succinct 
expression that Spinoza made concerning his philosophic pro- 
cedure, his method of study and investigation. " Philosophy," 
he says in one place, " is based on axioms which must be sought 
from nature alone." ^^ And in another, " As God's existence is 
not self-evident, it must necessarily be inferred from ideas so 
firmly and incontrovertibly true, that no power can be postulated 
or conceived sufficient to impugn them." ^^ This truth as well 
as God's essence and providence is best, " perceived through 
the fixed and immutable order of nature," ^° as exhibited in either 
thought or extension. Surely no system could make stronger 
claims than this for a foundation on the study of reality, and none 
could avow clearer intention to avoid abstraction or a preliminary 
synthesis of elements. In the note to the passage just quoted, 
Spinoza describes the method of procedure by which any one may 
repeat for himself the perception of God's essence. His existence, 
and like properties. ^"^ 

53 Op. cit., ch. XIV, p. 189. 
"Ibid., ch. VI. p. 85. 
55 Ibid., ch. VI, p. 84. 
58 Ibid., note 6, p. 270. 



22 Spinoza as Educator 

One must however guard against misunderstanding the term 
" general notion " in this note. It is not an abstraction, the use 
of which we have shown Spinoza avoided as imperiling the ap- 
proach to truth,^'^ but one of the axioms spoken of in the passage 
above. By a study of nature, in thought and in extension, Spinoza 
reached an insight into the nature of God as an explorer might find 
two routes to the same destination, one by land and the other by 
water. 

The two attributes are incommensurate. The language of ex- 
tension is inapplicable to thought and vice versa, although sub- 
stance thinking and substance extended are one and the same 
substance.^^ This antithesis must be carefully distinguished from 
that between idea and ideatum. The idea is of course always 
thought but the ideatum may be either thought or extension. 
Elwes has thus made himself responsible for a misleading transla- 
tion of the corollary to proposition seven of the second book of 
the Ethics, an error which Fullerton avoids by adhering to 
Spinoza's terms without attempting to expound them. In so far 
as we consider ideas we must view them in the logical and eternal 
relations that pertain to essences ; in so far as we consider ideata 
we must understand them to refer to the finite aspects of matter 
and thought wherein both are governed according to the formulae 
of causes and eflfects. But whether view^ed under one form or the 
other the order and connection is the same. In respect to their 
essences, all extended and thinking things are subsumed under one 
another in that logical relation wherein nothing can be or be con- 
ceived without its superior idea. In respect to their existence all 
finite things whether extended or thinking are regulated by the 
causal law. But whether we call them essences or ideata they are the 
same things in a single concatenation. " The order and connection 
of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things." ^^ 
We must understand things to signify anything in so far as it is 
a cause f^ and everything mental and physical is a cause so far 
as it is finite. 



^"^ Ethics, pt. V, prop. 36, cor. note. 

58 Ibid., pt. II, prop. 7, note. 

5^ Ibid., pt. II, prop. 7. 

«o Ibid., pt. II, prop. 9, prop. 19. 



The Elements of Human Nature 23 

III 

We have thus far discussed the conditions under which man 
exists and the character of the universe of which he is a part. 
The discussion has been restricted to those aspects of the properties 
studied that are appHcable to man and that property of man in 
which we are especially interested, namely, his education. From 
this exposition it should be clear that man is comprehended under 
the idea of God. But ideas follow from God in infinite ways: 
( I ) Ideas of thinking- things, that is, of forms of thought such as 
other ideas, volitions, emotions, etc. ; (2) ideas of extended things, 
i. e., body ; (3) ideas of non-existent things, such as chimeras ; and 
(4) ideas of things that do exist. The first or broadest idea under 
which man is subsumed, is the idea of a body which exists.*^ ^ 
This idea constitutes the essence of man's mind and its ideatum is 
the human body. The clearest statement of this theory is in the 
correspondence with Tschirnhausen. It seems advisable to quote 
at length : " The human mind can only acquire knowledge of 
those things which the idea of a body actually existing involves, 
or of what can be inferred from such an idea. For the power 
of anything is defined solely by its essence (Ethics III, vii) ; the 
essence of the mind (Ethics, II, xiii) consists solely in this, 
that it is the idea of body actually existing ; therefore the mind's 
power of understanding only extends to things, which this idea of 
body contains in itself, or which follow therefrom." ^2 The 
statement is so lucid that comment tends to complicate and befog, 
but it seems well to direct attention to the absence of the article 
before the word " body '"' in the translation " the idea of body " as 
showing that the human mind thus stands linked to other minds, 
and to emphasize the fact that although the mind and the body are 
one and the same thing, under the attributes of thought and exten- 
sion respectively as well as under the aspects of idea and ideatum, 
yet the mind is not the idea of an existing body because that body 
begins to exist.^^ What the idea is depends upon other ideas, 
whereas the existence of the body depends upon its relation to the 
bodies that produced it according to the processes of generation. 
It must be counted to Spinoza's credit that he understood and 

"Ethics, pt. ir. prop. 11. i.^. 

62 Correspondence, letter LXVI. p. 398. 

"Ethics, pt. II, prop. 6, cor.; ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 11, note. 



24 Spinoza as Educator 

rejected Descartes' incomplete dictum, Cogito, ergo sum, which as 
accepted by Locke, Berkeley, and Kant brought subjectivism into 
our world and — shall we say — much, if not all, of our philosophic 
woe. Hume gave up the attempt to bridge the gap between matter 
and mind and Kant's Copernican revolution merely shifted the 
abutment from which the span was to be sprung from matter to 
mind. For Spinoza, however, there was no gulf between mind and 
body. They are one. The mind is the body under the attribute of 
thought and the body is the mind under the attribute of extension, 
yet the mind is not the body nor the body, the mind ; but rather 
both are the restricted, but by no means the transcendental, aspects 
of a human being. There is no more a gap between mind and body 
than between the earth and the world.*'^ Three important conse- 
quences follow from this identification of mind and body in the 
sense indicated, (i) There is no need to seek a mysterious or 
recondite basis more fundamental than mind and body, from which 
both may be manufactured. Such is not Spinoza's substance. 
Mind and body are ultimate and anything is what they reveal it 
to be. (2) There is no Ding an SicJi. Kant made the subject and 
object common factors because he applied to both thinker and 
phenomenon the laws of thought. But, it has become a platitude 
to say that there remained for him something unknown beyond 
the pall of time and space which yet had a share in the resultant 
thought. (3) Not so for Spinoza. He stood firmly for the pro- 
position that " the ideas of the attributes of God and of particular 
things do not own as their efficient cause their objects (idcata) 
or the things perceived, but God himself in so far as he is a think- 
ing thing." *'^ All thinking things act thus, and as God can " form 
the idea of his essence and of all things which follow necessarily 
therefrom, solely because he is a thinking thing, and not because 
he is the object of his own idea," ^^ so man has ideas because he 
also is a thinking thing, and not because there are objects which 
through their effects upon the nervous system cause ideas of 
themselves. Body cannot determine mind to think.^^ 

The converse also is true.^^ In so far as things are extended 



'^Correspondence, letter XXVII, p. 316. 
^^ Ethics, pt. II, prop. 5. 
^ Ibid., demonstration. 
" Ibid., pt. III. prop. 2. 
^ Ibid., pt. II, prop. 6. 



The Elements of lIiDiiaii Nature 25 

they are iiulepenclent of thought, for the very reason that at first 
blush might tempt one to think the reverse, namely, because an 
extended thing is not different from its idea except in aspect, that 
is in respect to the attribute under which it is considered. 

" The actual being of things, which are not modes of thought, 
does not follow from the divine nature, because that nature has 
prior knowledge of the things. Things represented in ideas follow 
and are derived from their particular attribute in the same manner 
and with the same necessity as ideas follow from the attribute of 
thought." '^•* 

At the risk of standing charged with superfluous comment, it 
may not be amiss to note that the expression " their particular at- 
tribute " is used because " things represented in ideas " may be 
either extended things or thinking things as was shown in the 
final paragraph of the preceding section of this chapter. 

Thus, at a stroke, Spinoza made substantial the shadows of 
idealism, turned the light on the Ding an Sich and left mind and 
matter without a bone of contention ; for if they are one, there 
can be no question about the superiority of either. Such state- 
ments as may be found in the letters, e. g., " from extension as 
Descartes conceives it, to wit, a quiescent mass, it is not only 
difficult but absolutely impossible to prove the exist- 
ence of bodies " ""^ and that " the variety of the universe " cannot 
" be deduced a priori from the conception of extension only," " it 
must necessarily be explained through an attribute which ex- 
pressed eternal and infinite essence," '^^ are not to be taken as 
evidence that Spinoza was after all an idealist, any more than his 
belief that man's immortality consists in the fact that there is 
something eternal to man's mind, whereas his body is wholly 
temporal, constitutes such evidence. These statements merely 
voice Spinoza's belief as to the nature of thought. It is not the 
business of matter to be knowledge and its failure to perform an 
office contrary to its nature is no proof of inferiority. 

" For instance, extension can only be called imperfect in respect 
to duration, position, or quantity ; that is, as not enduring longer, 
as not retaining its position, or as not being greater. It can never 
be called imperfect because it does not think, inasmuch as its 

^^ Loc. cit. 

'" Correspondence, letter LXX, p. 407. 

'1 Ibid., letter LXXII, p. 409. 



26 Spinoza as Educator 

nature requires nothing of the kind, but consists solely in extension, 
that is, in a certain sphere of being." "^^ 

But man's nature is essentially rational, as has been said, and he 
tends to view everything as resembling himself. As Spinoza 
says in another letter, " I believe that if a triangle could speak, it 
would say .... that God is eminently triangular." "''^ Con- 
scious of this tendency, Spinoza sought not to limit God to the 
attributes which come within the ken of man although he believed 
man's knowledge of God and the world to be true so far as it 
goes. 

IV 

The study of human anatomy was in its infancy in Spinoza's 
day. Harvey had published his epoch-making essay six years 
prior to the birth of the philosopher. Spinoza lived in his youth 
with a physician, Francis Van den Ende,"^^ and is conjectured 
with every show of probability to have availed himself of this 
opportunity to acquire the scientific knowledge of the time. It is 
especially noteworthy that for the important truths of his phil- 
osophy the advance of science suggests no revision except per- 
haps of phraseology. Descartes' theory that the mind is seated 
in the pineal gland he rejected, " lost in wonder that a philosopher 
.... who had so often taken to task the scholastics for wish- 
ing to explain obscurities through occult qualities, could maintain 
a hypothesis, beside which occult qualities are commonplace." "^ 

As is to be expected in view of the state of science in his day, 
Spinoza's account of the human body is physical rather than 
biological. Like all matter, the human body consists of " simple 
bodies " which are combined according to their mass,"'' and rate 
of motion.'^" He has a glimpse of the importance of time,'^^ as 
an element of velocity, but does not use it, in this respect only 
falling short of a complete use of the three factors, mass, velo- 
city, and time, on which every equation in modern physics is based. 
These " simple bodies " are variously combined into " compound 

^2 Correspondence, letter XLI, p. 357; cf. Ethics, pt. I, prop. 15, note. 

'3 Correspondence, letter XXVII, pp. 315, 316. 

^*J. Freudenthal, op. cit., p. 42. 

''S Ethics, pt. V, preface. 

^^ Ibid., pt. II, definition after axiom II, following Lemma III. 

"^ Ibid., pt. II, Lemma I. 

^^ Ibid., pt. II, prop. 44, cor. I, note. 



The Elements of Human Nature 27 

bodies " of which the law of union or relation constitutes the 
essence, so that one simple body may replace another or the num- 
ber of constituent bodies may increase or decrease without aflfect- 
ing the identity of the individual. ^-^ This process of combination 
is carried on with the compound bodies as constituents into 
greater and greater complexity, the human body being so highly 
complicated that it may lose its members without losing its essen- 
tial character. 

Each human body is one of many complex individuals that in 
conjunction with other bodies of all sorts and conditions make up 
the whole of nature.^'' Each human body maintains varying 
relations with a greater or smaller number of these surrounding 
bodies which resemble it or differ from it according to the number 
of common elements or the resemblance between their respective 
laws of union and relation. The scheme of regulation of these 
cosmic adjustments between body and body is forever beyond 
human ken. We know only in part and " are in many ways 
driven about by external causes, and like waves of the sea, driven 
by contrary winds we toss to and fro unwitting of the issue and 
of our fate." ^^ If we knew all the causes that co-operate in an 
event we should never need to ascribe anything to chance, " the 
pseudonym of God for those events which he does not choose to 
subscribe with his own sign manual." ^2 But from a comparison 
of any unit with all the others it is evident that there is disparity 
infinitely great between any body and all the rest. The force with 
which a human body endeavors to persist in its existence depends 
on the proportion of its constituent elements whose inherent 
tendency is to increase. Were it not for the fact that every other 
body has a conatus which similarly strives to carry out its poten- 
tialities, any given body could absorb and subjugate all others. As 
it is, the power of external causes is infinitely greater than our 
own.®3 But by combination with other human or non-human 
bodies the conatus of a man may be helped or hindered. Interfer- 
ence with the activity of the body may be disease^* or even 



"3 Ethics, pt. II, prop. 24; ibid., pt. IV, prop. 39. 

'^Ibid., pt. IV. prop. 4; ibid., pt. IV, appendix VI. 

*' Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. =59, note. 

»2 Coleridge, Table Talk. 

^ Ethics, pt. IV, prop. 3 ; ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 6. 

**Ibid., pt. IX, prop. 44, note; ibid., pt. IV, prop. 20, note 



28 Spinoza as Educator 

death.^^ Suicide is the effect of an external cause.^*^ Such 
changes having once been caused remain until their effects are 
removed or altered by other causes. An interesting instance of 
Spinoza's harmony with modern psychology is his reference to the 
force of suggestion in securing imitation. The explanation is 
physiological throughout.-'^^ Different external causes may affect 
the human body similarly, the total situation being different be- 
cause of the difference in the cause.^^ But the number of bodies 
that can affect the human body at the same time is limited."'*^ 

No matter what happens in the body's endeavor to preserve its 
existence, through the force which is expressed physically in the 
law that unites its elements,***^ whether the result be physical 
growth, or the destruction of the body ^^ in the clash and warfare 
with antagonistic conati, each bent on the preservation of its own 
existence or whether it be an activity that recombines other bodies, 
be it fashioning a garment, assembling a machine, the erection of a 
temple or the collection of other human bodies into a church, a 
school or a cabinet, in so far as the result is physical so is the 
cause.''- " Nevertheless, though such is the case," says Spinoza, 

" I can scarce believe, until the fact is proved by experience, that 
men can be induced to consider the question calmly and fairly, so 
firmly are they convinced that it is merely at the bidding of the 
mind, that the body is set in motion or at rest or performs a 
variety of actions depending solely on the mind's will or exercise 
of thought." 93 

Spinoza marshalls eight lines of argument to support his con- 
tention that material effects have material causes. 

1. Ignorance of the mechanism of the human body should give 
us pause in pronouncing what it can do of its own force. 

2. " The mechanism of the human body far surpasses in com- 
plexity all that has been put together by human art." 

3. " The body can by the sole power of its nature do many 
things that the mind wonders at," e. g., digestion. 

85 Ibid., pt. Ill, note. 

8^ Ibid., pt. IV, prop. 18, note. 

^"^ Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 32, note. 

88 Ibid., pt. IV, prop. 59. 

8^ Ibid., pt. II, prop. 40, note I. 

90 Ibid., pt. II, def. cit. 

*i Ibid., pt. IV, prop. 39, note. 

92 Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 2, note. 

93 Loc. cit. 



The Elements of Human Nature 29 

4. Many actions of the lower animals transcend human 
sagacity. 

5. The reference of the cause of bodily actions to the mind is 
a refuge of ignorance. 

6. The reciprocal interdependence of mind and body shows 
that neither is prior to the other but that both are equally original. 

7. " Experience abundantly shows that men can govern any- 
thing more easily than their appetites." 

8. Somnambulism. " If we speak in dreams it is by the spon- 
taneous action of the body," 

Convinced by this array of the facts that the body is neither 
the master nor the menial of the mind, Spinoza is wholly sane in 
what he says of its care. 

" The advantage which w^e derive from things external to us, 
besides the experience and knowledge which we acquire from 
observing them, and from recombining their elements in dififerent 
forms, is principally the preservation of the body ; from this point 
of view, those things are most useful which can so feed and 
nourish the body, that all its parts may rightly fulfil their func- 
tions. For in proportion as the body is capable of being afifected 
in a greater variety of ways, and of affecting external bodies in a 
great number of ways, so much the more is the mind capable of 
thinking. But there seem to be very few things of this kind in 
nature, wherefore for the due nourishment of the body we must 
use many foods of diverse nature. For the human body is com- 
posed of very many parts of different nature, which stand in con- 
tinual need of varied nourishment, so that the whole body may be 
equally capable of doing everything that can follow from its own 
nature, and consequently that the mind also may be equally 
capable of forming many perceptions." ^■^ 

Nor is he averse to the lighter benefits that accrue to the body. 

" Assuredly nothing forbids man to enjoy himself save grim and 
gloomy superstitions. For why is it more lawful to satiate one's 
hunger and thirst than to drive away one's melancholy. I reason 
and have convinced myself as follows : No deity, nor anyone else, 
save the envious, takes pleasure in my infirmity and discomfort, 
nor sets down to my virtue the tears, sobs, fears and the like, 
which are signs of infirmity of spirit ; on the contrary the greater 
the pleasure wherewith we are affected, the greater the per- 
fection whereto we pass ; in other words, the more must we neces- 
sarily partake of the divine nature. Therefore, to make use of 
what comes in our way and to enjoy it as much as possible (not 
to the point of satiety, for that would not be enjoyment) is the 

9* Ethics, pt. IV, appendix 27. 



30 Spinoza as Educator 

part of a wise man. I say it is the part of a wise man to refresh 
and recreate himself with moderate and pleasant food and drink, 
and also with the perfumes, with the soft beauty of growing plants, 
with dress, with music, with many sports, with theatres, and the like, 
such as every man may make use of without injury to his neighbor. 
For the human body is composed of very many parts, of diverse 
nature, which continually stand in need of fresh and varied 
nourishment, so that the whole body may be equally capable of 
performing all the actions, which follow from the necessity of its 
own nature ; and, consequently, so that the mind may also be 
equally capable of understanding many things simultaneously." ^^ 

It is plain that Spinoza believed that the world would go on just 
the same so far as material achievement is concerned if the attri- 
bute of mind were relegated to the limbo of the unknown together 
with such other attributes as there may be in excess of two. 
This is not saying, as the fourth chapter will show, that the 
world is not better for mind, but merely, and this is startling 
enough, that man could carry out the consequences of his nature 
without knowing what he is doing. Pictures would be painted, 
books written and read, business would be transacted exactly as 
we may imagine that bees lay up honey, or snow forms itself in 
crystals, and for the same reason, namely, that men are men as 
bees are bees and snow is snow ; which is no reason at all and 
cannot be, for matter is not amenable to reason. 

V 

Upon this simple theory of body Spinoza accounts for imagin- 
ation, memory, and feeling. To understand these concepts it is 
necessary not only to know that the human mind is the idea of 
the body, but also that there are different ideas of the human mind 
and of a human being. The idea of a body existing is different 
from the idea of a body not existing ; ^^ the idea of a body in so 
far as that body is caused by God is different from the idea of a 
body as caused by another body^^ and both ideas are different 
from the idea of a body as the cause of another body. Under 
each of these ideas diverse logical subdivisions are subsumed, and 
the ideas are variously combined under other major ideas. 

The idea which constitutes the human mind is the idea of a 

35 Ethics, pt. IV, prop. 45, cor. II, note. 
* Pt. Ill, prop, id; ibid., pt. IV, prop. 12. 
97 Ibid., pt. II, prop. 19. 



The Elements of Human Nature 31 

particular thing' wiiich exists. The ideal um to which this itlea 
corresponds is the human body and that consists of innumerable 
elements, simple bodies and compound bodies and still more com- 
plex bodies. Consequently the agreement between mind and 
body in human beings involves the fact that the human mind is a 
very complex idea ; for there is in thought an idea for each of the 
component parts of the body, but these ideas are not combined as 
are the material elements that enter into the constitution of the 
body. The latter are united according to the laws of extension 
whereas the corresponding ideas are subsumed, the one under the 
other, according to the laws of thought. Moreover, there is in the 
realm or attribute of thought an idea for every human body as 
well as for the bodies of animals, plants, and minerals.^'' That is 
to say, such things have minds. In every situation in w^iich the 
human body is brought into relation to one or more other bodies, 
the ideas of all the bodies are subsumed under an idea which not 
only expresses this relation but corresponds in thought to the 
whole physical combination.^^ But body A aflfected by body B 
is a different situation from body B affected by body A ; hence 
there is an idea for each respective situation. In other words the 
mind of one person differs from the mind of every other. 

" The images of things are modifications of the human body, 
whereof the ideas represent external bodies as present to us ; in 
other W'Ords, whereof the ideas involve the nature of our body, 
and, at the same time, the nature of external bodies as present." ^^^ 

Spinoza was not sure whether the physiological modification 
was on the retina or in the brain. ^"^ The fact that both were 
concerned did not, apparently, suggest itself to him. " When 
the mind regards bodies in this way we say it imagines." ^^^ 
These images or the knowledge of them need not be mental pic- 
tures for they do not necessarily recall the figure of things.^''^ 
The factors that govern the operation of the imagination, that is 
to say, the formation of images — for there is no faculty of imagin- 
ation apart from the particular images that the body forms — are: 
(i) The bodily situation that constitutes the image may continue 

^Ethics, pt. II, prop. 13, note. 

?9Ibid., pt. II, prop. 16. 
looibid., pt. Ill, prop. 27. 
Joilbid., pt. II, prop. 48, note. 

102 Ibid., pt. II, prop. 17, note. 

103 Loc. cit. 



32 Spinoza as Educator 

or recur after the external cause has been removed or has even 
ceased to exist; and (2) more than one external cause may afifect 
the body simultaneously. From these two factors result the va- 
garies of imagination, its uncertainties, the nature of abstractions 
and of memories. 

To have an image of a thing permits us to predicate nothing as 
to the existence of such a thing. Given certain bodily modifica- 
tions and the image is there. It may be the image of something 
that exists and is present to the senses, or it may be absent though 
still existing, or it may have ceased to exist or may never have 
existed. In either case, the thing will be imagined in the same 
way unless there be added to the images an idea which specifies 
the truth, whatever that may be, concerning the existence or non- 
existence of the thing imagined. The strength and glory of the 
imagination consists in the vigor with which the body forms images 
and has nothing to do with the question whether or not there 
be such things as are imagined. '°^ The image exists and may be 
as wild and improbable as " Gorgons and hydras and chimaeras 
dire." 

The number of external causes that may act on the body at the 
same time is unlimited. The bodily state produced tends to recur 
if any of the causes that contributed to the original state again 
operate on the same body. Thus association of images is really 
an association of things linked to one another through the body 
which they have chanced to afifect. A memory is such an associa- 
tion when at least one of the external causes of the image is 
absent. Memory is therefore physiological and means the repeti- 
tion of a physical state after it has once passed. On the mental 
side it involves an interval of time during which the thing re- 
membered shall have been forgotten ; that is, there shall have been 
introduced the idea which negatives the existence of that thing. 
Memories are physical states recalled by other physical states with 
which they have become accidentally connected through simul- 
taneous action upon the human body. 

Spinoza makes no provision for recognition in recollection, but 
it is obviously implied in his theory of consciousness. Believing 
that if we know a thing we know that we know it, he doubtless 
did not feel that recognition in memory was a distinct problem. 

1"* Ethics^ pt. II, prop. 17 note. 



The Elements of Hiunan Nature 33 

The sanie external causes are not always in conjunction with 
the human body but may combine in any conceivable fashion. 
Consequently, a given physical state may be associated not with 
one but with several different causes, according as now one and 
then the other operates on the body in conjunction with a third 
cause. As a result an image will not always recall the same asso- 
ciated image but may recall different images at different times ; 
hence what Spinoza terms the wavering of the imagination,^*^ ° 
a phrase well calculated to describe the flightiness of minds 
whose chief activity is imagination, and which he seems to regard 
as genetically the root of the concept of contingency. 

When the association of images is limited to those of one kind, 
as when we remember in rapid succession all sorts and conditions 
of men, we are prepared to form an abstract notion of the thing 
remembered. All abstract notions or ideas are confused images. 

" They arise to wit from the fact that so many images, for in- 
stance, of men, are formed simultaneously in the human mind, that 
the powers of imagination break down, not indeed utterly, but to 
the extent of the mind losing count of small differences between 
individuals (e. g., color, size, etc.) and their definite number and 
only distinctly imagining that in which all the individuals, in so 
far as the body is affected by them, agree ; for that is the point, in 
which each of the said individuals chiefly affected the body ; this 
the mind expresses by the name man and this it predicates of an 
infinite number of particular individuals." ^^'^ 

Another type of image is the bodily modification which results 
from the sight of printed words, the hearing of a spoken word, or 
the reaction that follows upon any symbol.^^^ Such images as well 
as all memories and abstractions make up the first and lowest kind 
of knowledge — opinion ; ^^s ^^g only possible source of error. It is 
therefore impossible to have an image of God, because in so far as 
w£ know the divine nature we know it truly, though, of course by 
no means completely. ^'^'^ Many inferences might be added to this 
account of the imagination, but the important fact has been re- 
peatedly stated although it cannot be too strongly emphasized, i. e., 



1^ Ethics, pt. II, prop. 44, cor. I, note. 

1"* Pt. II, prop. 40, note i. 

^"^ Ibid., loc. cit., not 2. 

lo^ De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 8. 

1"^ Ibid, pt. II, prop. 47, note ; Correspondence, letter LX, p. 387. 

3 



34 Spinoza as Educator 

"' The essence of words and images is put together by bodily mo- 
tions, which in no wise involves the conception of thought." ^^*^ 

To words and images Spinoza might have added emotions for 
these also are put together by bodily motions and do not involve 
the conception of thought. The principle according to which the 
elements of the body are united seeks constant accretion wherein it 
exhibits its essence as the conatus conservandi. A constant growth 
in efficiency is therefore the natural tendency of every human 
being, a tendency which may be helped or hindered by external 
bodies. The transitions from a given degree of efficiency to a higher 
one due to the conatus cannot be accompanied or represented by 
images, for images are those bodily states whose ideas involve the 
ideas of other bodies. Those transitions from one state of bodily 
efficiency to another in which the tendency of the human essence 
is helped, checked, or overcome by external causes are to be 
understood as transitions from image to image as w^ell as from 
bodily modification to bodily modification. Every change from 
image to image does not necessitate a change in efficiency. The 
transition from one state of efficiency to another that is greater or 
less is an emotion.^ ^* 

As there is in the attribute of thought an idea which corresponds 
to the image in the attribute of extension, so there is an idea of 
the increase or decrease of bodily power. Although we lack the 
warrant of any explicit statement from Spinoza, it seems certain 
that he would have been willing to apply the term image indiffer- 
ently to the bodily modification and to the idea thereof which 
involves the existence of an external cause. He employs the term 
emotion in this double sense, which for him is fundamentally a 
single one. From this usage arises the possibility of misunder- 
standing what an emotion is in the attribute of thought. It is not 
the transition from the idea of one image or bodily state to the idea 
of a diflferent image or bodily state, but it is the idea of such transi- 
tion.^^2 A second liability to error arises from the fact that Spin- 
oza's analysis of these transitions between physical states is couched 
in terms of the ideas of the transitions and of the ideas of the 
images. This is doubtless due to the fact that language expresses 

110 Ethics, pt. II, prop. 49. cor. note. 

"1 Ibid., pt. Ill, def. Ill ; ibid, pt. IV, appendix i. 

112 Ibid., pt. Ill, general definition, explanation. 



The Elements of Human Nature 35 

the nomenclature of feeling- from the standpoint of mind. We 
are thus prepared to understand his statement that the out- 
ward modifications of the body observable in an emotion, e. g., 
*' trembling, pallor, sobbing, laughter, etc, are attributable to 
the body only, without any reference to the mind." ^^^ There are 
ideas of these modifications of the body involved in the complex idea 
which comprehends whatever modifies the body as it exists, and 
which constitutes the mind of man. But those ideas do not enter 
into the idea of the transition from one bodily state to another, 
which transition is emotion ; for neither the transition nor the idea 
of it trembles, nor is pale nor has any of the mentioned symptoms, 
which are merely the accompaniments and therefore the signs of 
the chance in efficiency. 

The classification of the emotions depends upon: (i) Whether 
the change in efficiency is the outcome of the body alone, that is, 
the co)iatus, or the result of the interaction between the body and 
other bodies; and (2) whether the force for existence becomes 
greater or less. Under the former aspect we have actions and 
passions ; under the latter, pleasure and pain. In so far as the 
human essence or conatus is a thing of body aiid mind together it 
is called appetite.^^"* Consciousness of appetite is desire,"^ but 
it is immaterial whether this distinction be made or not, for 
strictly speaking the physical effects are the effects of appetite. 
" For whether a man be conscious of his appetite or not, it remains 
the same appetite." ^^^ If the endeavor to persist in its own exist- 
ence be the sole cause for increased efficiency, the transition thus 
occasioned is called an action or activity ; ^^'^ if external causes 
contribute to the efficiency or if they counteract it to such an 
extent that the body's efficiency decreases, the transition or emo- 
tion is called a passion or passivity.^^^ Pleasure and pain are 
both passive states wherein man passes to greater and to less 
power 1^^ respectively. Inasmuch as a man's desire, that is, 
consciousness of appetitiis or conatus, may be an ingredient of 
any emotion, Spinoza's designation of desire as a co-ordinate emo- 

^'^ Ethics, pt. Ill, prop. 59, note. 
"* Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 9, note. 
^^ Ibid., loc. cit. 

^^ Ibid., pt. Ill, Definitions of the Emotions, I, Explanation. 
11^ Ibid., pt. Ill, Definitions, II; ibid., pt. II, prop. i. 
^^* Ibid., pt. Ill, General Definition ; ibid., pt. IV, prop. 2. 
^3 Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 2, note; ibid., pt. Ill, Definition of the Emotions, 
II, III; Explanation. 



36 Spinoza as Educator 

tion with pleasure and pain must be regarded as a departure from 
strict logical classification. Desire as man's essence in whatever 
aspect is more fundamental than either action, passion, pleasure 
or pain, and save for its great convenience as a locution could be 
omitted from Spinoza's presentation with distinct advantage to. 
clearness. 120 Spinoza moreover recognizes as pleasure those emo- 
tions which arise from desire or human essence alone ^^^ in spite 
of the restriction upon the meaning of pleasure above noted, and 
logically points out that from the conatus alone only pleasure can 
be derived, since man's essence could never be the cause of a 
lessening in his power,i22 Spinoza calls the active emotions 
fortitudo, and divides them into animositas and generositas, both 
of which involve the social element which is the subject of the 
fourth chapter ; that chapter therefore affords a more convenient 
place for the discussion of these emotions and what they denote. 

Spinoza's treatment of the emotions, although not physiological, 
is concrete throughout. He believed that there are no passive 
emotions save such as are joined to some object, and that there 
are as many emotions as there are objects whose conjunction with 
the human body produces the change in its efficiency. ^ 23 Since 
the same objects affect different persons or the same person at 
different times the actual number of emotional states exceeds cal- 
culation. ^ 24 The additional fact that emotions may be associated 
with bodies that do not cause them directly leads to the statement 
that anything can be the cause of any emotion. ^25 ^j^,^ j^j^jg \^ 
turn makes possible the substitution of causes ^^e ^nd hence the 
substitution of emotions. ^27 Imitation as a means for arousing 
and strengthening feeling lends support to this theory.^^s fhe 
distinction between the pleasure arising from increased efficiency 
of particular organs and that which is due to the greater power of 

^ The fundamental character of desire in relation to pleasure and pain 
is clear from Ethics, pt. Ill, prop. 13, cor. note; prop. 27, note I; prop. 37; 
prop. 59- 

^1 Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 58. 

122 Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 59. 

123 Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 56. 

^ Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. SI ; ibid., pt. IV, prop. Z2>- 

125 Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. IS. 

126 Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 48. 

127 Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 43. 

128 Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 27, 31 ; Definitions of the Emotions, XXXIII, 
Explanation. 



The Elements of Human Nature 37 

the organism as a whole ^-^ is as sane as it is important, and this 
estimate appHes also to his dictmn : " Desire arising from pleasure 
is, other things being equal, stronger than desire arising from 
pain." ^2*^ But modern as are these scattered statements that are 
here collected to illustrate the fact that his observations place him 
in accord with the most modern theory of the emotions, they are 
perhaps less striking than his remark that we esteem things good 
because we desire them, and not the reverse.^^^ 

Spinoza knew that his way of treating the emotions was a de- 
parture from ordinary method. In the eloquent paragraphs 
which begin the Third Part of the Ethics and which are paralleled 
by the Introduction to the Political Treatise, he says : 

" Most writers on the emotions and on human conduct seem to 
be treating of matters outside nature than of natural phenomena 
following nature's general laws. They appear to conceive man to 
be situated in nature as a kingdom within a kingdom ; for they 
believe that he disturbs rather than follows nature's order, that he 
has absolute control over his actions, and that he is determined 
solely by himself. They attribute human infirmities and fickle- 
ness, not to the power of nature in general but to some mysterious 
flaw in the nature of man which accordingly they bemoan, deride, 
despise ; or as usually happens, abuse." 

Needless to say, the attitude here condemned did not die out 
with the seventeenth century. Spinoza continues : 

" Nothing comes to pass in nature, which can be set down to a 

flaw therein ; for nature is always the same so that 

there should be one and the same method of understanding the 
nature of all things whatsoever, namely through nature's universal 
laws and rules. Thus the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so 
on, considered in themselves, follow from this same necessity and 
efficiency of nature ; they answer to certain definite causes, through 
which' they are understood, and possess certain properties as 
worthy of being known as the properties of anything else, whereof 
the contemplation in itself affords us delight." 

The bearings of Spinoza's philosophy on education are reserved 
for the last chapter of this essay where the problem of discipline 
is discussed at length. Yet as we turn from the aspects of the 
human body summarized in this chapter to a consideration of the 

129 Ibid., pt. IV, prop. 41, 60. 

^ Ibid, pt. IV, prop. 18. 

^1 Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 9, note. 



38 Spinoza as Educator 

place of intellect in Spinoza's system it is inspiring to reflect upon 
bis dignified, indeed lofty, attitude toward those instances of human 
frailty especially characteristic of youth, which perplex and irritate 
those teachers whose task is control and discipline and who too 
often are themselves swept into the vortices of passion by their 
failure to understand, if not to admire, the emotions of others, not 
to say their own. 



CHAPTER III 
THE SUPREMACY OF THE INTELLECT 

The foregoing exposition of Spinoza's doctrine as to the ele- 
ments which appear in the constitution of a human being, and of 
the conditions under which mankind Hves, displays reason as the 
distinguishing characteristic of man. 

The term reason, which designates the essence of man, has 
many synonyms, the use of which is determined by the connection 
in which the human being is viewed, — the conjunctions in which 
human essence operates. Human essence is idea and truth ; ^ 
it is certainty,^ the nature of a thing,^ and its definition.'* It is 
appetite, desire, impulse and will ; ^ it is conatus,^ virtue, and 
power.''' It is the principle of the union of the body.^ Yet under 
all these manifestations its law is always that of reason. 

In this chapter a study of the intellect is undertaken with 
regard to (i) the active nature of thought; (2) the manner in 
which it operates; and (3) the relation of thought to its objects 
or content. 

I 

Activity is fundamental to Spinoza's philosophy, not as a for- 
mulated hypothesis to be proved nor as a concept that calls for 
explanation, but as a pervasive ingredient of nature which he 
who has eyes to see may discover. Hence his admiration of 
Democritus.^ For Spinoza, bodies are moving things and rest is 

^ De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 14. 

2 Ibid., pp. 13, 19. 

3 Ibid., pp. 25, 35, 39. 

* Ethics, pt. I, prop. 11, 3d proof, note. De Intellectus Emendatione, 
P- 35- 

5 Ethics, pt. Ill, prop. 9, note. 

6 Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 9, note. 
Hbid., pt. IV., prop. 8. 

^ Ibid., pt. IV. prop. 39 ; pt. II, prop. 24 
^ Correspondence, letter LX, p. 388. 

39 



40 Spinoza as Educator 

explicable only through opposition of movement. ^^ God, also is 
an activity,^^ " it is as impossible for us to conceive God as not 
acting, as to conceive him as non-existent." ^^ ^\^q non-kinetic 
activity of thought is apparent in the term selected as character- 
istic of thought. 

" By idea, I mean the mental conception which is formed by the 
mind as a thinking thing. I say conception rather than percep- 
tion, because the word perception, seems to imply that the mind 
is passive in respect to the object; whereas conception seems to 
express an activity of the mind." ^^ 

This activity of conception consists in the connection of subject 
and predicate ; ^'^ it is affirmation and marks all ideas whether 
their idcata exist or not.^^ In all predication we have a phenom- 
enon in which the mind regards several things together, and 
understands their points of agreement, difference, and contrast.^'' 
Since this takes place by virtue of the nature of thinking, it is said 
to be determined from within. This does not indicate a subjective 
attitude. The mind is determined from within, not when the 
thoughts concern themselves with imaginations which are seen 
as through a glass darkly, and which operate through the inade- 
quately comprehended relations between the human body and 
other bodies, but when they deal with reasons, from which the 
implications of thought unfold of necessity because of the active 
character of thought. 

Before proceeding to the discussion of will or the active aspect 
of thought it may not be out of place to remark that it is affirma- 
tion itself, and not its activity that is fundamental. The human 
essence has two aspects or attributes, but is one particular eternal 
truth. It differentiates man from brutes,^" as reason, the typical 
form of human thinking. As reason it constitutes the essence of 
the mind,^^ and is the immortal part of man ; ^^ yet it is not 
different from its physical correlative, the principle which unites 

10 Ethics, pt. II, lemma III, after prop. 13. 

11 Ibid., pt. I, prop. 17 and def. xii. Ibid., pt. I, prop. 34. 

12 Ibid., pt. II, prop. 3, note. 

13 Ibid., pt. II, def. iii. 

1* De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 23. 

15 Ethics, pt. II, prop. 49, note. 

1^ Ibid., pt. II, prop. 29, note. 

i^bid., pt. Ill, prop. 57. 

13 Ibid., pt. V, prop. 38. 

15 Ibid., pt. V, prop. 40; pt. IV, prop. 4. 



The Supremacy of the Intellect 41 

complex physical units,^^ save in appearing under a different 
attribute, that of thought. 

The activity of thought is not that of body though both are 
aspects of human essence.^^ The latter is motion, the former, 
v^ill. Will is that which forces one conclusion and not another to 
follow from a given premise. It is the affirmation of ideas. 

" It is the faculty whereby the mind affirms or denies what is 
true or false, not the desire wherewith the mind wishes for or 
turns away from any given thing." 22 

Will is not a mental fiat which causes voluntary movements of 
the body. Mind, of which will is a form or function, cannot 
determine body to rest, motion, or anything whatsoever. Since 
every idea involves an affirmation will and intellect are one and 
both are but the general name lor individual thoughts and voli- 
tions.23 

The will is not free to act without cause nor to transgress the 
laws of thought. But it is never more free than when operating 
according to the nature of mind. 

" The soul acts according to fixed laws, and is, as it were, an 
immaterial automaton." -•* 

" It is plain that the dictates of the mind are but another name 
for the appetites ; and therefore vary according to the varying 
state of the body." ^^ 

" Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free ; their opinion 
is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance 
of the causes by which they are conditioned. Their idea of free- 
dom, therefore, is simply their ignorance of any cause for their 
actions." 2« 

To strengthen the position set forth in these extracts Spinoza 
enumerates some of the things that the will cannot do. It cannot 
control the appetite nor speech, it cannot prevent men from doing 
things they repent of. It cannot manacle the mind that it ceases 
knowing, nor curtain it against consciousness. " It is not within 
the free power of the mind to remember or forget a thing at 

20 Ibid., pt. V, prop. 22. 

21 Ibid., pt. III. prop. Q, note. 

22 Ibid., pt. II, prop. 48, note. 
23Loc. cit. 

2^ De Tntellectus Emendatione, p. 32. 

25 Ethics, pt. Ill, prop. 2, note. 

26 Ibid., pt. II, prop. 35, note. 



42 Spinoza as Educator 

will." 27 We may desire to obey a command to believe or wish 
with all the heart to yield adherence to a thesis at the behest of 
those in authority, or at the entreaty of those whom we love. 
Spinoza asks one of the most eloquent questions in the history of 
thought: "What shall we do if reason prove recalcitrant ?" ^^ 
For example, " by what rewards or threats can a man be brought 
to believe, that the whole is not greater than its part, or that 
God does not exist, or that that is an infinite being which he sees 
to be finite, or generally anything contrary to his sense of 
thought? So, too, by what rewards or threats can a man be 
brought to love one whom he hates, or to hate one whom he 
loves ? ■ ' 29 

II 

The knowledge of mere experience, unorganized opinion, and 
inadequate ideas was discussed in the previous chapter. The 
term reason is restricted to the second kind of knowledge. It 
arises " from the fact that there are notions common to all men 
and adequate ideas of the properties of things." ^^ These common 
notions are the mental concomitants of the common elements found 
in collections of individuals as discussed in the section on body in 
the preceding chapter. Notions common to all men form the basis 
of our ratiocination.31 Thinking is a social activity. 

" Someone may ask how it would be, if the highest good of 

those who follow after virtue were not common to all? 

To such an inquiry I make answer, that it follows not accidentally 
but from the very nature of reason, that man's highest good is 
common to all, inasmuch as it is deduced from the very essence 
of man, in so far as defined by reason." ^2 

Reason and not imagination is the characteristic form of human 
thinking, because the arrangement of ideas in reason is complete, 
whereas in imagination it is partial. 

" So if it be the nature of a thinking being, as seems, prima 
facie, to be the case, to form true, or adequate thoughts, it is plain 
that inadequate ideas arise in us only because we are parts of a 

27 Ethics, pt. Ill, prop. 2, note. 

28Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. XV, p. 193. 

29Tractatus Politicus, ch. Ill, sec. 8. 

30 Ethics, pt. II, prop. 40, note ii. 

31 Ibid., pt. II, prop. 38, cor. 

32 Ibid., pt. IV, prop. 36, note. 



The Supremacy of the Intellect 43 

thinking being, whose thoughts — some in their entirety and others 
in fragments only — constitute our mind." ^^ 

This formation of adequate thoughts proceeds by 

" that association of ideas which arises from the order of the 
intellect, whereby the mind perceives things through their primary 
causes and which is in all men the same." ^'^ 

To reason is to have ideas thus ordered,^^' that is such as are 
understood through human nature alone.^" Adequate ideas are 
not only true, but are correct thought.^^ They not only corre- 
spond accurately to their ideata being therein true, but they are 
also complete in structure, having subject and predicate, not how- 
ever necessarily formulated in words. Reason operates according 
to fixed laws which determine its character. They are inde- 
pendent of the objects about which we reason, and the validity of 
our conclusions depends quite as much upon a normal operation 
of thinking as upon the ultimate correspondence between a con- 
clusion and its ideatum. The criterion of thought is thus found 
in the laws of thought itself. ^^ These laws of thought differ 
from those of the imagination.^^ The principle which connects 
imaginations is the recollection of their relations to the body, 
whereas reason finds its connection in that which is common to 
several bodies.'*^ We understand other things as we compare 
them with ourselves.-*^ The contrast between imagination and 
reason in respect to the adequacy of the latter and the inadequacy 
of the former appears in the orderly, complete, and fully related 
character of the one and the confused, incomplete, and unclassified 
character of the other. Inadequate ideas are "as consequences 
without premises." ^^ 

One body acts upon another causally by means of the elements 
which both bodies have in common.^^ Hence the resemblance 
between ratiocination and causality which appears in the use of the 
conjunction " because," — by cause of — in the statement of a 

^3 De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 28. 

^ Ethics, pt. II, prop. 18, note. 

^ Ibid., pt. IV, prop. 27. 

^ Ibid., pt. IV, appendix ii. 

2^ Ibid., pt. II, def. iv. Correspondence, letter LXIV. 

38 De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 26. 

39 Ibid., p. 33. 

*^ Ethics, pt. V, prop. 4. 

" Ibid., pt. IV, prop. 29. 

*2 Ibid., pt. II, prop. 28. 

<3 De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 8. Ethics, pt. I, axioms iii, iv, v. 



44 Spinoza as Educator 

reason. To name a cause is to give a reason.** The unity of 
mind and body is evinced in this fact, for if it were possible to 
find a thing- not caused by another, and having no effect upon 
anything whatever such a thing could have no place in a train of 
reasoning.*^ Since the fundamental unity of the universe is in 
the concatenation of causes, which is also the order and connec- 
tion of ideas, there is in nature a principle of union by which it 
may be understood as a whole, and to this totality the mind be- 
longs, not as a component part but as something which could 
neither be nor be conceived were it not for the order and connec- 
tion which subsumes it. The knowledge of this is reason.'*^ 
This order and connection, " that which is in itself one, men im- 
agine to be multiplex," ^^ but reason reveals the unity which is 
exhibited in " nature's universal laws and rules," provides a 
universally applicable " method of understanding the nature of all 
things whatsoever," ^'^ and is itself the assurance and demonstra- 
tion of their unity. It is equally rational to deal with things as 
effects as to view them as causes. Nothing is without some ef- 
fect, and " whatsoever follows from human nature in so far as 
it is defined by reason must be understood solely through human 
nature as its proximate cause," ^® for in human nature are found 
the elements common to itself and that which follows therefrom. 
Reason does not always deal with things at every step, but 
afllirmation follows afffrmation and one deduction is drawn from 
another according to the laws of thought."^"^ The conclusions thus 
reached will agree with the results produced by the causal sequence, 
because there is but one order and connection of which causes and 
ideas are reciprocals. The possibility of thus attaining a true 
conclusion does not prevent thinkers from reaching erroneous 
conclusions, if they start from false premises ^^ or employ words 
which do not precisely correspond in meaning to what they desig- 
nate, ^2 or fail to observe the order of thought.^^ Sooner or later, 

"•Ubid., pt. I, prop. II, 2d proof. 

^5 De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 15. 

«6Ibid., p. 6. 

^Hbid., p. 9- 

«8 Ethics, pt. Ill, Preface. 

*9Ibid., pt. IV, prop. 35. 

50 De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 39, ii, i"- Ethics, pt. V, prop. 12. 

51 Ibid., pt. I, appendix, p. 77. 

52 De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 33. 

53 Ethics, pt. II, prop. 10. 



The Supremacy of the Intellect 45 

however, a fabric of fallacious reasoning will reveal its short- 
comings, for its conclusions will not agree with the order of 
causes. ^^ 

Reason and emotion are antithetic, for the former is concerned 
with the activity that springs solely from a human individual ; 
whereas emotion involves the conjunction of an external force 
with the individual. All forces merge in a resultant ; the 
stronger overcomes the weaker; opposing forces counteract one 
another and harmonious forces augment one another.'^^ In the 
effort to conserve its existence the human individual seeks to 
dominate all external forces ; such domination can take place only 
by absorbtion or identification of elements. Reason proceeds by 
this method. Any object can be understood and thus brought 
into subjection, but the totality of nature cannot be thus under- 
stood, although such complete rational comprehension may be ap- 
proximated.^*' Only so far as connections with other objects 
interfere with the development of the individual and check the 
conatus sese conservandi are they emotional and not rational and 
therefore antagonistic to human welfare. Therefore Spinoza does 
not seek the extinction of the emotions but to so manage them as 
the result of studying their characteristics, that their full, pro- 
portioned and directed play may enhance human efficiency. His 
self-control is therefore the reverse of Stoic, for he ever seeks to 
understand the cause of the emotion and to distinguish it from 
its modification of the human body. His doctrine is an elabora- 
tion of the parable of the sower, with the admission that the 
cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches will always 
have power to intervene between men and a complete under- 
standing of their environment.^'^ 

HI 

Spinoza does not treat of the genesis of consciousness ; he re- 
stricts himself to a consideration of its nature. The quasi-genetic 
study of the mind " as though it had just begun to exist," which 
begins wdth the thirty-second proposition of the Fifth Book of 
the Ethics, — the tenth from the last proposition in the work — 
regards mind, knowledge, or consciousness as in no wise different 

'■^ De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 23. 

^ Ethics, pt. V, axiom i. Correspondence, letter XV. 

56 Ibid., loc. cit. 

57 Ethics, pt. IV, prop. 15. 



46 Spinoza as Educator 

in nature at its inception from what it is at every stage, save as to 
extent. From the first it is mind, having power to think true 
thoughts, " under the form of eternity." Knowledge grows from 
more to more with the increase of the number of things known,^^ 
but its first activity is as genuinely a true idea as any late activity. 
One stage or kind of knowledge does not develop into a higher 
kind, although the same thing may be known in different ways : ^^ 
by imagination, by reason, or by intuition, — the three orders of 
knowing. But that which is known of a thing differs according 
to the kind of knowledge we have, e. g., in imagination its relation 
to the body, in reason, wherein it agrees with another thing, in 
intuition, its very nature. Hence the character of knowledge de- 
pends upon the things known.^*^ 

Consciousness and knowledge are identified. " The mind's es- 
sence consists in knowledge ; " ^i " in so far as a man knows him- 
self by true reason, he is assumed to understand his essence." ^^ 
From these statements and those of the previous paragraph we 
conclude that increase in knowledge means increase in conscious- 
ness, and this conclusion Spinoza makes in the following words, 
" in proportion, therefore, as a man is more potent in this kind of 
knowledge he will be more completely conscious of himself and 
of God." "^^ 

Knowledge is an association of ideas arranged in hierarchies 
according to the nature or essence of their idcata. In a human 
mind the complete system is not displayed. The following quota- 
tions and comments make apparent the relation of the two. 

" In order that all ideas may be reduced to unity, we shall 
endeavor to so associate and arrange them that our mind may, as 
far as possible, reflect subjectively the reality of nature, both as a 
whole and as parts." ^"^ 

" To reproduce in every respect the faithful image of nature, 
our mind must deduce all its ideas from the idea which represents 
the origin and source of the w^iole of nature." ^^ 

58 De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 15; cf. p. 34, note ii. Ethics, pt. V, 
prop. 24. 

59 De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 9. Ethics, pt. II, prop. 40, note n. 
*" De Intellectus Emendatione, pp. 8, 14. 

^1 Ethics, pt. II, prop. 11; pt. V, prop. 36, note; pt. V, prop. 38. 

^"^ Ibid., pt. IV, prop. 53. 

^ Ibid., pt. V, prop. 31, note. 

" De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 34. 

^ Ibid., p. 15. 



The Supremacy of the Intellect 47 

But, as is stated in the first of these excerpts this association of 
ideas does not as a whole form the system of ideas subsumed 
under the idea which is the mind or soul of a human being. The 
association of ideas which enter into or form the stream of con- 
sciousness includes images and memories, modifications of the 
human body, as we have seen, and varying with the individual."" 

" For instance, those who have most often regarded witli 
admiration the stature of a man, will by the name man under- 
stand an animal of erect stature ; those who have been accustomed 
to regard some other attribute will form a different general image 
of man, for instance, that man is a laughing animal, a two-footed 
animal without feathers, a rational animal, and thus in other cases, 
everyone will form general images of things according to the 
habit of his body." ^"' 

All such incomplete ideas are, however, subsumed under the 
idea which is the human mind, which therefore consists both of 
adequate and inadequate ideas."^ And as the idea which is the 
essence of the human mind has a place in the general hierarchy 
of logical thought all incomplete ideas are in that manner brought 
into that system. 

It is to be noted that in neither kind of association do the things 
include the ego. The thinker may be an object of knowledge, 
but the relation of subject and object is not recognized. To know 
man, snh specie eternitatis, is to comprehend him under the idea 
" reasoning being " ; to know him according to the first order of 
knowledge is to comprehend him under some idea that but par- 
tially expresses his essence. To be an object for consciousness 
is therefore to " be something real, and capable of being under- 
stood." "** It is not to be the stimulus of nerve currents that 
somehow produce consciousness. As was shown in the second 
chapter, Spinoza believed that body cannot determine mind to 
think. 

Spinoza recognized the regress of thought. The thing whereof 
one is conscious is not the idea of that thing; the latter may, 
however, be the thing thought of and so on without end, but an 
attempt to retrace the mirrored path contracts every idea into 

^ Ethics, pt. II, prop. 18, note ; cf. William James, The Principles of 
Psychology, vol. I, pp. 554, 604. 
^^ Ethics, pt. II, prop. 40, note i. 
68 Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 3. 
6^ De Intellectus Emcndatione, p. 13. 



48 Spinoza as Educator 

the thing originally thought of. This object of thought may be 
thought or it may be extension, but without it there can be no 
thinking,— no consciousness. Hence the sterility of Descartes' 
" Cogito ergo sum." "I think about objects" is the minimum 
of experience, so that the existence of objects rests on the same 
evidence that has been adduced to prove the existence of thought. 
Without objects there is no thinking, and the more objects we 
know the more mind or consciousness we have and the more we 
know God, as was said in a previous paragraph. 

The mind can have no consciousness of itself or of its ideatum, 
the body, by the first kind of knowledge, for only objects external 
to the body are thus known, and they are in fact modifications 
of the body since they are known as subsumed under the complex 
idea which constitutes the human mind. But no idea can be sub- 
sumed under itself. There can be no classification of but one 
item, and no relation of but a single term. Therefore the mind 
cannot know itself nor the body save as an external thing. The 
members of the body, any of the complex individuals which con- 
stitute the body but which may be lost without destroying the 
identity of the body, — any of these may be known, as we are con- 
scious of other external objects, but not otherwise, " for the eye 
sees not itself but by reflection by some other thing " though it may 
see the arm and other members of the body. The only self- 
consciousness to which we can attain is that which we knew 
through the elements common to consciousness and other things. 
We may know consciousness as a relation, as we know other 
relations ; and we may know it as classified under more compre- 
hensive ideas than that which constitute the human mind; for 
example, under intellect, or under the still broader idea of thought 
or even under God. But whether the self be inadequately known 
by the first sort of knowledge or adequately, by reason, under a 
certain form of eternity, it is only known as the body."** 

Spinoza's avoidance of subjectivism is all the more remarkable 
in view of the fact that Locke, another great philosopher in the 
generation after Descartes, was completely in its toils. Two re- 
sults for Spinoza's philosophy may be noted. First, the existence 
of things independent of consciousness is brought to the fore. 
They may be things of extension or things of thought. " Whether 
a man be conscious of his appetite or not, it remains one and the 

^® Ethics, pt. V, prop. 29. 



7721* Supremacy of the Intellect 49 

same appetite.""^ Second, extension is not less important or 
basic than thought, for " if we consider our mind, we shall see 
that our intellect would be more imperfect if our mind were alone, 
and could understand nothing besides itself." '- 

There is that which reason cannot lay hold of. That which 
makes a thing what it is, and which distinguishes it from every- 
thing else, namely the essence of a thing, is something unique and 
cannot be common to two or more things. ^'^ This does not refer 
to individual mutable things, the basis for whose differentiation 
will occupy attention in the next chapter, but to particular things 
whose essences dififer and which form classes or kinds of things. 

" The bases of reason are the notions which answer to things 
common to all and which do not answer to the essence of any 
particular thing." ''"^ 

To perceive this unique and non-rational element in things is the 
ofifice of the third or highest order of knowing. In respect to the 
immediacy of apprehension it resembles the first kind of knowl- 
edge ; it comes through the " eyes of the mind " ; but in respect 
to its adequacy it is like reason, the second order of knowledge."^^ 
It is, however, different from reasoning, whether inductive or 
deductive.'*' Spinoza did not claim to know many things after this 
exalted fashion. "^"^ Mathematical truths may be so known most 
readily for they are concerned with simple ideas "'^ or those not 
very complex. God being a simple idea may be thus known, 
though not readily, because the word " God " becomes associated 
with other meanings which veil the signification of the term. 
Spinoza himself had as distinct an idea of God or substance as of 
a triangle.'^ There is no doubting such knowledge ; it is its own 
evidence. 

" The mind feels those things that it conceives by understand- 
ing, no less than those things it remembers. For the eyes of the 
mind, whereby it sees and observes things, are none other than 
proofs." ^" 

" Ibid., pt. Ill, definitioti of the emotions, i, explanation, p. 173. 
"2 Ibid., pt. IV, prop. 18, note. 
73 Ibid., pt. II. prop. 37- 
7* Ibid., pt. II, prop. 44, cor. ii. 
75 Ibid., pt. V, prop. 28. 
7'' Ibid., pt. II, prop. 10, cor. note. 
"7 De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 9. 
78 Ibid., p. 23. 

73 Correspondence, letter LX, p. 386. 
*° Ethics, pt. V, prop. 23, note. 
4 



50 Spinoza as Educator 

Consciousness, leaving out of account this third and rarest type 
of thinking, consists of experience and reason.^ ^ Experience, 
which gives us knowledge of finite existence and reason which 
knows things sub quandam species eternitatis.^^ Other than this 
there is no thought or mind.^^ In man mind is supreme. His 
intellect is man's chief part. Without it he would not be man. 
In reason he attains to his full flower and achieves that for which 
he exists. But in recognizing the supremacy of reason in man, 
it is equally important to recognize that it is not the criterion of 
perfection in other things, animate or inanimate ; and that man 
has no right to judge the rest of nature by himself. This is 
equally true of God. What man finds in himself is pertinent to 
his own nature, but not therefore to the nature of other things. 
But although the essence of man can neither be nor be conceived 
without God, God is not a man and his properties are divine and 
not human. Man's intellect is supreme in him, but like his other 
properties, it may be overcome by outward forces ; it is supreme 
also with reference to the other finite forms of thought such as 
love and will which can neither be nor be conceived without it, 
but it is inferior to the infinite power of thinking which is an 
attribute of God, and without which the idea which constitutes 
the human mind could neither come into existence nor be main- 
tained therein. 

*^ Correspondence, letter LXII, p. 391. 

82 Ibid., letter XXVIII, p. 316. 

^ Ethics, pt. V, prop. 4, note ; ibid., pt. V, prop. 35, cor. note. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE COMPLICATIONS OF PERSONALITY 

Our examination of human nature as depicted in Spinoza's 
writings has thus far dealt with the characteristics and conditions 
common to all men. Spinoza, however, recognized not merely that 
men are individuals or units, but also (i) that individuals differ, 
and (2) that they unite. The former fact is the occasion for 
Spinoza's theory of personality ; the latter is the basis of his 
political theory or sociology. Commentators have rightly made 
much of Spinoza's recognition of the social nature of man.^ His 
political studies made this inevitable, though it is equally the out- 
come of his metaphysics. As has been pointed out repeatedly 
Spinoza emphasized the human origin of man and accounted for 
his existence through his parents. Although it is quite true that 
the family is not a sufficient explanation of social consciousness, 
yet it provides the physical basis for it, as does the nervous or- 
ganism for the exercise of personal consciousness. In the typical 
family of father, mother, and offspring there is organic unity, 
differentiation, interdependence, and adjustment of function. LTpon 
this physical union which is common to mammals there are exer- 
cised the socializing offices of imitation. Yet however rudimen- 
tary the family relation, we find there operating in parvo and less 
distinctly discriminated, the functions of industry, government, re- 
ligion, and education. 

I 

All human beings are of the same essence. Yet there are dis- 
tinctions between men, as one star differs from another star in 
glory. Things differ in essence and things of the same essence 
differ in degree.^ One man differs from another and from him- 
self so to speak, as he plays in turn every part from that of the 
puling infant to the slippered pantaloon. This is not a difference 

^ Duff, Spinoza's Ethical and Political Theory. 
2 Correspondence, letter XXXVI, p. 348. 

51 



52 Spinosa as Educator 

in essence, for if human essence should disappear there would be 
no men whatsoever ; but one man may cease without causing the 
disappearance of others, and a man may become more or less 
manly, whatever meaning- attaches to that adjective, without losing 
his essential nature. The phenomenon is one of existence, or as 
Spinoza often calls it, of reality ^ or perfection.-* The distinction 
between one man and another is not qualitative but quantitative; 
it is a question of the degree or intensity with which his essence 
asserts itself. " When I say," says Spinoza, 

" When I say that a man passes from a lesser to a greater per- 
fection, or z'ice versa, I do not mean that he is changed from one 
essence or reality to another ; for instance, a horse would be as 
completely destroyed by being changed into a man, as by being 
changed into an insect. What I mean is, that we conceive the 
thing's power of action, in so far as it is understood by its nature, 
to be increased or diminished." ^ 

Such change in the amount of essence possessed by a man is 
made inevitable by the activity of man's nature. The conatus 
sese conserz'andi strives to overpower everything contrary to the 
nature of man and to establish his dominance over external things. 
The difference in degree of development between two men is thus 
explicable. Growth acquires meaning from comparison with pre- 
vious states and with other men. 

Perfection cannot be predicated of that which has necessary 
existence but only of that which is and is conceived through some- 
thing else ; ''• for the former does not admit of degrees of perfec- 
tion or existence. A supremely perfect being possesses infinite 
attributes.^ A finite being, as man, may possess two, namely, 
thought and extension. An ens rationis which is debarred from 
the attribute of extension is less perfect than things which exist 
under both attributes. The human mind, as was shown in the 
third chapter, is more perfect because we know something besides 
thought. There is thus a basis for the extensive phraseology of 
praise and blame, of approval and disapproval, that people employ, 
but it is often misapplied because the range within which it is ap- 
plicable is misunderstood. In so far as things are compared with 

3 Ethics, pt. I, prop. 9; De Inteliectus Emendatione, p. 19. 

* Ibid., pt. IT, definition vi. 

5 Ibid., pt. IV, preface. 

8 Correspondence, letter XL, p. 354. 

^Ethics, pt. I, prop. 10, note; prop. 11. 



The Complications of Personality 53 

infinite substance they are all perfect.'^ They have what reality 
they have, the amount that is vouchsafed them. The degree of 
their force for existence justifies what they are and are able to do. 
Their dependence upon the source of all essences ^ is the guarantee 
of their perfection. ^^ " Nothing- comes to pass in nature which 
can be set down to a flaw therein." ^' The concept of perfection 
is applicable merely within a given class of things, that is, those 
of the same essence, save as the lack of a given quality, such as an 
attribute, makes a comparison of essences permissible. 

Spinoza is at pains to make clear the genesis of the concept. 

" We are wont to refer all the individual things in nature to one 
genius, which is called the highest genius, namely, to the category 
of Being, whereto absolutely all individuals in nature belong. 
Thus, in so far as we refer the individuals in nature to this cate- 
gory, and comparing them one with another find that some possess 
more of being or reality than others, w^e, to this extent, say that 
some are more perfect than others." ^^ 

The comparison with a type here described is more narrowly 
presented in the following passage from a letter to Blyenberg, who 
although an unsympathetic and unsuccessful aspirant to disciple- 
ship, elicited from Spinoza some of the most valued commentaries 
and supplements to be found in the epistles. 

" We give one and the same definition to all the individuals of 
a genus as for instance all who have the outward appearance of 
men : we accordingly assume all things which are expressed by 
the same definition to be equally capable of attaining the highest 
perfection possible for the genus ; when we find an individual 
whose actions are at variance with such perfection, we suppose 
him to be deprived of it and to fall short of his nature." ^'^ 

Although estimates of good and evil are arbitrary notions which 
represent man's limited, or rather his purely human vision, the dif- 
ferences in men upon which estimates of merit or demerit are based 
exist. What Spinoza contends for is to make clear that what is 
termed evil is a negation, a mere absence of quality which someone 
else has or had ; and moreover, that it is of greater interest and 

8 Ethics, pt. I, prop. 2>?), note 2. 

^ Correspondence, letter XXXVI, p. 347. 

10 Ibid., letter XXXIV, p. 342. 

^1 Ethics, pt. Ill, preface, p. 1:29. 

'2 Ibid., pt. IV, preface, p. 189. 

^ Correspondence, letter XXXII, p. 2)22>- 



54 Spinoca as Educator 

value to study and understand ^^ the differences which distinguish 
one person from another. 

He enumerates five marks, which are but so many varied state- 
ments of a single principle, whereby the differences between men 
may be recognized. 

( 1 ) The comparative strength of the conatus sesi conservandi 
as opposed by external forces : 

" Men are differently affected by one and the same object and 
to this extent differ in nature." 

" One and the same man may be differently affected towards 
the same object, and may therefore be variable and inconstant." ^^ 

This will be recognized as Spinoza's theory of the emotions and 
may be elucidated by another quotation : 

" The emotions are called by us strong, when we compare the 
emotion of one man with the emotion of another, and see that one 
man is more troubled than another by the same emotion ; or 
when we are comparing the various emotions of the same man 
one with another, and find that he is more affected or stirred by 
one emotion than by another. For the strength of every emotion 
is defined by a comparison of our own power with the power of 
an external cause. '"^ 

(2) The constitution of the human body: 

" In proportion as any given body is more fitted than others 
for doing many actions or receiving many impressions at once, 
so also is the mind, of which it is the object, more fitted than 
others for forming many simultaneous perceptions ; and the more 
the actions of one body depend on itself alone, and the fewer other 
bodies concur with it in action, the more fitted is the mind of 
which it is the object, for distinct comprehension. We may thus 
recognize the superiority of one mind over others." ^'^ 

(3) Pleasure is a mark of perfection : 

" The greater the pleasure whereby we are affected the greater 
is the perfection through which we pass." 

A comparison of the statements cited here with Spinoza's theory 
of body will make clear their identity. Pleasure is the increase in 
the efficiency of the body or the idea of that increase ; the increase 

^* Ethics, pt. Ill, preface. 
J'S Ibid., pt. IV, prop. Zi- 
^^ Ibid., pt. V, prop. 20, note. 
^^ Ibid., pt. II, prop. 13, note. 



The Complications of Personality 55 

being due to the desire to persist in one's own being, wliich finds 
expression in the union of physical elements. 

(4) Every approach to reason indicates increased perfection. 
For example : 

" Shame, like compassion, though not a virtue, is yet good, in 
so far as it shows, that the feeler of shame is really imbued with 
the desire to live honorably ; in the same way as suffering is good, 
as showing that the injured part is not mortified. Therefore, 
though a man who feels shame is sorrowful, he is yet more per- 
fect than he, who is shameless, and has no desire to live honor- 
ably " 1'^ 

Finally, (5) The number of things known by reason and 
intuition is an index of perfection : 

" The highest virtue of the mind is to know God or to under- 
stand things by the third kind of knowledge, and this virtue is 
greater in proportion as the mind knows things more by the said 
kind of knowledge, consequently, he who knows things by this 
kind of knowledge passes to the summit of human perfection." ^^ 

The progress toward perfection, the victory of man's essence 
over its environment, and the attainment to a rational view of all 
things is man's destiny. His failure to realize it completely 
through the opposition of circumstances may be further examined 
in connection with what Spinoza has to say of privation, a concept 
which he contrasts with that of negation, although fundamentally 
the two are identical. Privation is the absence of something be- 
lieved to belong to the nature of a thing ; negation is the absence of 
something that does not belong to the nature of a thing.-*^ Both 
concepts are entities of reason. So far as negation is concerned 
we do not ascribe imperfection to the lack of that which does not 
belong to the nature of a thing ; " although extension denies of it- 
self thought this argues no imperfection in it." ^i 

" Extension can be called imperfect in respect of duration, posi- 
tion or quantity : that is, as not enduring longer, as not retaining 
its position, or as not being greater. It can never be called im- 
perfect because it does not think, inasmuch as its nature requires 
nothing of the kind." — 

18 Ethics, pt. IV, prop. 58, note. 

1^ Ibid., pt. V, prop. 2y ; cf. pt. IV, prop. 56. 

^ Correspondence, letter XXXIV, p. 339. 

^Ibid., letter XLI, p. 356. 

22 Correspondence, loc. cit., p. 357. 



5t> Spinoza as Educator 

Privation can only be conceived through a comparison of present 
condition with past condition of the same thing, or of a given con- 
dition with that of another thing of the same kind. From the 
standpoint of God, whose consequences are all perfect, privation 
and negation are the same, for nothing is lacking from anything 
that follows from the divine nature. Imperfection thus appears to 
have meaning solely as a human locution. Perfection, however, is 
a positive thing; it is whatever degree of the force for existence 
the thing may at the moment possess. 

The question of perfection resolves itself into that of person- 
ality ; " every one according to his particular emotions judges or 
estimates what is good, what is bad, what is better, what is worse, 
lastly what is best and what is worst." -^ We have noted that 
the emotions vary according to the combination of external objects 
with the nature of man, the total situation varying as the complex 
elements that form man's body are modified by their union with 
the external object. But men are distinguished from one another 
by their emotions.-'* The difference between a man at one stage 
of efficiency and another is therefore a matter of variation in 
the combinations of elements which constitute his body and other 
objects which are foreign to that body. One man's constitution or 
make-up differs from that of another in a similar way. One man 
is regarded as surpassing another by reason of his prudence, in- 
dustry, what not.2^ 

" These qualities are regarded as peculiar to him and not as 
common to our nature ; we, therefore, no more envy their pos- 
sessor than we envy trees for being tall, or lions for being cour- 
ageous." 2« 

Differences in personality are hence differences in the external 
causes which modify a man's essence or desire.-" This puts the 
personal element into the range of imagination and opinion, — the 
first order of knowledge, and excludes it from that of reason.^^ 

The theory that personality is the combination of elements which 
regulates the degree of efficiency of which a man is capable from 
moment to moment is substantiated not only by the fact that the 

'2 Ethics, pt. Ill, prop. 39, note. 
2* Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 51, note. 

25 Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 52, note. 

26 Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 55. note. 

27 Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 56. 

28Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. II, p. 30. 



The Complications of Personality 57 

emotions result from compounding- external forces with the activity 
which constitutes the essence of the individual, but also by the 
phenomena observable in changes of personality. Such changes 
occur in the individual normally, that is, without causing so sudden 
and complete a disturbance of the elements as to alter wholly the 
principle of their union. Such for example are the changes which 
make a man like a thing one day and loathe it the next.-^ More 
violent alterations in a combination of elements may destroy per- 
sonality. Even though the body maintain its functions perfectly 
Spinoza would call such alteration death, for destruction is a 
resolution of a whole into its parts so that none of them expresses 
the nature of the whole.-"^^ 

" Whatever brings about a change in the proportion 

of motion and rest which the parts of the human body possess, 
causes the human body to assume another specific character."^^ 

It is noteworthy, though, that save in the annihilation of the human 
body there is not loss but change of personality. Complete change 
of personality is the death of the original person, but so long as 
there is a principle of the union of the human body, so long there 
is a personality. Such changes as that of " a certain Spanish 
priest •' who lost through illness the use of his native language and 
all memory of his past poetic achievements Spinoza deems less re- 
markable than the alteration from an infant to an adult.^^ 

II 

That which makes us persons is at variance with that which 
makes us men, yet every man in the endeavor to conserve his exist- 
ence is impelled to make other men like himself.^^ In so far as 
such adjustment takes place it does so exactly as the individual 
controls his emotions or as two opposing forces combine in agree- 
ment. 

" The laws or nature of one part adapt themselves to the laws 
or nature of another part, so as to cause the least possible incon- 
sistency." ■"•* 

29 Ethics, pt. Ill, prop. 59, note. 

^•^ Correspondence, letter XLI, p. 356. 

31 Ethics, pt. IV, prop. 39, XLI. 

22 Ibid., loc. cit. note. 

^ Ibid., pt. Ill, prop. 31, cor. note. 

^ Correspondence, letter XV, p. 290. 



58 Spinoaa as Educator 

" If two contrary actions be started in the same subject, a 
change must necessarily take place, either in both, or in one of 
the two. and continue until they cease to be contrary." 

We recognize in Spinoza's sociology the same mechanical con- 
cept of force which was noted in his psychology. The effort of 
every individual to subjugate its surroundings is, therefore, so far 
as human beings are concerned, in the direction of harmony. 
Man's desire to make others like himself is in the line of 
self-expression, and may be emotional and short-sighted or it 
may be rational, with an eye to the general welfare. In the 
former case, the result is opposition and confusion ; ^^ in the 
latter, the culmination is order and agreement, peace on earth 
and good will among men. The appetite through which man acts, 
whether rationally or irrationally, is the same appetite.^'^ 

There is nothing so like a man as another man.^'^ The elements 
which afford a basis for co-operation and mutual rational dealings 
are provided in their common nature. In the adjustment of in- 
teracting human forces united action with other men proves to be 
the path of least resistance. When two men unite their endeavors, 
the power of each is more than doubled.^ '^ Not only can one watch 
while the other sleeps or works and thus keep constant guard 
against an inimical and threatening environment, but the allied 
companion not only strengthens his partner but weakens the enemy, 
whom he has deserted. For example, if a man who is opposed by 
five others win one of them to his side, the ratio of his power to 
that of the enemy is no longer one-fifth but one-half. The 
stimulus to altruism is hence a personal, not to say selfish 
motive.-''^ 

Rational men have thus been shown to live surrounded by ob- 
jects of three kinds: (i) other rational men, (2) irrational men, 
(3) non-human things. The politic course is the rational one. 
Toward inanimate and non-human things man's attitude is prefer- 
ably that of working out the dictates of his nature regardless of the 
welfare of these lower creations. ■*•' As to irrational men the wise 
way is double-tracked. On the one hand, one must avoid giving 
such persons any power, especially over one's own person. It is 

25 Ethics, pt. Ill, prop. 55, note. 
'^ Ibid., pt. IV, prop. 4, cor. note. 
2^ Ibid., pt. IV, appendix, ix. 
^ Political Treatise, ch. II, sec. 13. 
39 Ethics, pt. IV, prop. ^7, note i. 
^ Ibid., pt. IV, prop. 37, note ii. 



The Complications of Personality 59 

not well, however, to sever relations entirely, because such persons 
may be of service.'*^ On the other hand, one must, as a matter of 
rational policy, seek to show such persons the way to deliverance 
from their emotions, that they may ally themselves to rational 
society.^2 

Since reason is the typical form of knowledge, and the essence 
of human beings, the differences between men are differences in 
knowledge, in minds, in degrees of consciousness."*^ 

" It is true, that the wicked execute after their manner the 
will of God : but they cannot therefore, be in any respect com- 
pared with the good. The more perfection a thing has, the more 
does it participate in the deity, and the more does it express per- 
fection. Thus, as the good have incomparably more perfection 
than the bad, their virtue cannot be likened to the virtue of the 
wicked, inasmuch as the wicked lack the love of God, which pro- 
ceeds from the knowledge of God, and by which alone we are, 
according to our human understanding, called the servants of God. 
The wicked, knowing not God, are but as instruments in the 
hand of the workman, serving unconsciously, and perishing in the 
using ; the good, on the other hand, serve consciously and in serv- 
ing become more perfect." "*■* 

This social service or participation in the deity, is not pantheism, 
else the participation would be equal for all sorts and conditions of 
men as well as for the rest of creation."*^ Since consciousness is 
always consciousness of objects ;•'■* the differences in conscious- 
ness are those in the objects of consciousness. Hence the 
more perfect the object of consciousness, the more perfect will 
be the consciousness of that object. And since where an idea 
exists there may be found also all subordinate forms of thought, 
love of the most perfect object follows the knowledge of such an 
object. Since, also, " happiness is made to depend on the quality 
of the object which we love," ^^ it follows that the highest degree of 
consciousness, of pleasure, and of efficiency will follow from the 
possession of the all comprehending idea, namely, God. 

" Whence it appears, how potent is the wise man, and how much 
he surpasses the ignorant man, who is driven only by his lusts. 

*i Ethics, pt. IV, prop. 70; ibid., pt. IV, appendix xiii, xiv. 

^^Ibid., pt. IV, appendix, ix, xii. 

*3 Correspondence, letter XXXVI. 

«Ibid., letter XXXII, p, 335. 

*^ Ethics, pt. II, prop. 13, note. 

« Supra, p. 48. 

*^ De Intellectus Emendationc, p. 5. 



00 Spinoza as Educator 

For the ignorant man is not only distracted in various ways by 
external causes without ever gaining- the true acquiescence of his 
spirit but moreover lives, as it were, unwitting of himself, and of 
God, and of things, and as soon as he ceases to suffer, ceases also 
to be. 

" Whereas the wise man, in so far as he is regarded as such, is 
scarcely at all disturbed in spirit, but being conscious of himself, 
and of God, and of things, by a certain eternal necessity, never 
ceases to be, but always possesses true acquiescence of his spirit."'*^ 

The nature of this acquiescence may be understood from the 
final paragraph of the Appendix to Part Four of the Ethics: 

" Human power is extremely limited, and is infinitely surpassed 
by the power of external causes ; we have not, therefore, an abso- 
lute power of shaping to our use those things that are without us. 
Nevertheless, we shall bear with an equal mind all that happens to 
us in contravention to the claims of our advantage, so long as we 
are conscious that we have done our duty, and that the power we 
possess is not sufiticient to enable us to protect ourselves com- 
pletely ; remembering that we are a part of universal nature, and 
that we follow her order. If we have a clear and distinct under- 
standing of this, that part of our nature which is defined by in- 
telligence, in other words the better part of us, will assuredly 
acquiesce in what befalls us, and in such acquiescence will endeavor 
to persist. For, in so far as we are intelligent beings, we 
cannot desire anything save that which is necessary, nor yield 
absolute acquiescence to anything save to that which is true ; where- 
fore in so far as we have a right understanding of these things, the 
endeavor of the better part of ourselves is in harmony with the 
order of nature as a whole." '^^ 

Men may unite upon this as common ground. Whatever may be 
the differences in ability which distinguish man from man, yet as 
an individual face to face with the forces of nature that encompass 
him, each is unable to cope with his environment save as he as- 
sumes the philosophic attitude. 

Stone walls do not a prison make 

Nor iron bars a cage ; 
Minds innocent and quiet take 

That for a hermitage. 

Upon this basis all reasonable men are equal. Yet this very 
basis of equality involves a recognition of superiority in one's fel- 



*^ Ethics, pt. V, prop. 42, note. 
^' Ibid, pt. IV, appendix xxxii. 



The Complications of Personality 6i 

low men as well as in the non-hnman environment, and it involves 
also an effort to understand such differences among human beings. 

" Though some men enjoy gifts which nature has not bestowed 
upon their fellows, they are not said to surpass the bounds of 
human nature, unless their special qualities are such as cannot be 
said to be deducible from the definition of human nature. For in- 
stance, a giant is a rarity, but still human. The gift of composing 
poetry ex tempore is given to very few, yet it is human. The same 
may, therefore, be said of imagining things as vividly as though 
they saw them before them, and this not while asleep, but while 
awake. But if anyone could be found who possessed other means 
and other foundations for knowledge, he might be said to trans- 
cend the limits of human nature." ^^ 

Reason does not inform us how far these divergences may go. 

" To those who ask wdiy God did not so create men that they 
should be governed only by reason, I give no answer but this : 
because matter was not lacking for the creation of every degree of 
perfection from the highest to the lowest ; or more strictly, be- 
cause the laws of his nature are so vast, as to suffice for the pro- 
duction of everything conceivable by an infinite intelligence." ^^ 

It is evident that Spinoza was not in sympathy with the charge 
that nature 

" doth dote, 
And cannot make a man 
Save on some worn-out plan." 

Man, according to Spinoza, is social because he is human. He 
accepts the characterization of man as a " social animal " with the 
reservation that it does not define man by his proximate cause. A 
study of man's nature shows that he can prevail against the forces 
which oppose his conatiis only by understanding them; as he 
studies them for this purpose he finds among them a set of forces 
— other men — which understands him. What wiser course than 
to avail himself of their peculiar aid ? Only through co-operation 
with them upon the basis of mutual understanding can either he or 
they attain the full development of human essence. This process 
of mutual liberation from whatever checks the application of reason 
to the affairs of human life, progressively pursued in co-operation, 
is education. 

50 Theologico-Politicu?, note to ch. II. 2, p. 270. 
*l Ethics, pt. I, appendix. 



CHAPTER V 
THE CRITERIA OF EDUCATION 

Even as his life closed, Spinoza contemplated additional 
treatises. 1 The " Political Tractate " upon which he was engaged 
remained a fragment with the proposed portion concerning educa- 
tion unwritten.2 In the absence of such an ordered presentation of 
his thought upon this subject which is indeed closely allied with 
the entire fabric of his writings on ethics, statescraft, and language, 
the only alternative is to infer from his metaphysical, psychological, 
and sociological theory as summarized and interpreted in the 
foregoing chapters certain broad conclusions as to some of the 
principal and apparently permanent concepts of education. Our 
discussion will deal, first, with the aim of education ; second, with 
its method ; third, with its range and subject matter ; and fourth, 
with the problem of conduct and control. Fortunately, however, 
we are not confined wholly to inference. In the course of his 
writings, none of which is entirely foreign to education, Spinoza 
set down many hints which we may profitably gather. They were 
introduced chiefly by way of comment and illustration, and in 
serving that purpose are of course inferences, by the way, from 
the theories in connection with which they are given. In the 
aggregate they are sufficiently numerous, and bear complete proof 
of such spontaneity as to convince one that though Spinoza declined* 
the Heidelberg professorship, he was as truly a teacher as a 
philosopher. 

I 

The discussion of the aim of education from the standpoint of 
Spinoza's philosophy calls at the outset for a reconciliation. We 
have seen that Spinoza was not a teleologist. What meaning 
then shall attach to his utterances about the aims of men, the 
plans they make, the purposes of their acts ? Contradiction there 

1 Freudenthal, op. cit., p. 294 ff. 
2Tractatus Politicus, ch. VIII. sec. 49- 
63 



The Criteria of Education 63 

is none. Man is not the centre of the universe according to whose 
standard all nature is judged. He is but an atom in the system 
of things, and the universe is not to be accounted for in terms 
of purpose, aim, or end. Horses are not born to serve man, yet 
he may breed them for that purpose. The terms in question are 
properly employed when applied to human affairs. Men would 
not be human if they had no aims, for such aims are consciousness 
of what is craved, and desire is the very essence of a human 
being. Things as such have no purpose, are not aims, save as 
men adopt and adapt them. 

The ability to realize an aim does not guarantee its merit. On 
the basis of natural right all aims are equally valid. 

" Therefore, a man ignorant and weak of mind is no more 
bound by natural law to order his life wisely, than a sick man is 
bound to be sound of body." 

The emphasis here is upon natural law. We have noted, how- 
ever, that Spinoza approves the definition of man as a social 
animal, and that there are laws to which man must conform that 
arise from this fact. Man was not made to live alone, but in 
co-operation and harmony with others like himself. In such com- 
panionship he is still subject to the laws of the whole of nature 
which he obeys, and therefore affirms with a will more extensive 
than his reason. He combines with other men ; he plans for the 
future ; he evaluates causes according as they help or hinder the 
accomplishment of his desire. This is not a lofty criterion, yet it 
may lead to lofty and ideal results. Man in society is yet a man, 
whose conatus is selfish and seeks its own aggrandisement. Men 
are enemies at heart ; altruism is selfishness after all ; honesty is 
the best policy because it pays ; and self-preservation is the first 
law of nature. Every man wishes that all others shall be like him 
that he may thereby advance his own interests. 

Among men who are subject to their passions harmony is 
impossible, for many men want the same things and the things 
they want all cannot have, such as wealth, fame, the enjoyment 
of the senses, and the like. But in society which is ordered by 
reason men do not seek these things because they realize that there 
are better aims, namely to understand rather than to possess. 
In such society there is division of labor; one man supple- 
ments another and all men come to agree, not in body nor in 



64 Spinoza as Educator 

imagination nor in ability but in opportunity with the aid of every 
other rnan to develop each his conatiis v^ithout let or hindrance. 
Thus v^hen rational men seek to make others like themselves, 
they have an entirely different model, and aim at a wholly different 
result from the arbitrary control sought by men who are not under 
the rule or dominion of reason. 

II 

I. Aims and plans are connected as are effect and cause. As an 
aim is consciousness of a desired effect so a plan is a prevision of 
the causes which produce an effect. Since the order and con- 
nection of ideas and causes is one and the same order, the problem 
of aims and plans is not only a problem for practical method but 
for logical method as well. As he forecasts step by step the 
course that shall conduct him to the end he holds in view, man 
is in double danger. The causes, through something independent 
of his thought, may fail to produce the contemplated result ; or 
the operations of his thought may go awry, and though he per- 
forms his plans precisely, the result may not be that at which 
he aimed. 

Following the fashion of his time Spinoza undertook a study 
of method,^ the Tractatus de IntcUcctus Emendatione. That it 
remained a fragment is due, in the opinion of commentators, 
to the inherent difficulties of the subject. It may have been 
the reverse. Having found that the exercise of rational thought 
is the highest aim of man, believing that ideas and causes 
are reciprocal aspects of a single order and connection, and 
that the excellence of thought depends upon the quality of its 
object, it would seem that the problem of method was no longer 
of paramount importance and might well be abandoned for the 
more pertinent study of the highest object of knowledge as 
presented in the Ethics. 

Nevertheless, two aspects of the problem. How to Live and 
How to Think, are presented in the Treatise, the former being 
the more fundamental because of man's finite intellect which 
makes it necessary for him to utilize many things of which he has 
but inadequate ideas. On this account a plan of life made in 
consequence of the obligation imposed by human nature is tenta- 

3 Wolf, Spinoza's Short Treatise and Life of Spinoza, p. 41 ; cf. also 
Freudenthal, op. cit. pp. 113-114. 



The Criteria of Education 65 

tive and provides for what experience has shown to be the 
requirements of hfe. The fewer the items in such a plan the 
better, because it is at best an uncertain expedient to construe 
as desirable, things whose nature we do not fully understand but 
which we know have laws of their own apart from our desires 
and appetites. But the needs of life impose a modicum of such 
things upon us and the best we can do is to so restrict ourselves 
that more enlightened views need not cause many modifications 
in such a plan. 

Spinoza limited to three items this preliminary plan of life. 

■' I. To speak in a manner intelligible to the multitude, and to 
comply with every general custom that does not hinder the attain- 
ment of our purpose. For we can gain from the multitude no 
small advantages, provided that w'e strive to accommodate our- 
selves to its understanding as far as possible ; moreover, we shall 
in this way gain a friendly audience for the reception of truth. 

II. To indulge ourselves with pleasures only so far as they are 
necessary for preserving health. 

III. Lastly, to endeavor to obtain only sufficient money or 
other commodities to enable us to preserve our life and health, 
and to follow^ such general customs as are consistent with our 
purpose." ^ 

Such a formulation of rules may be called in question by reason, 
which seeks to establish them as principles through such revision 
as the introduction of adequate ideas makes necessary. Yet the 
need for the observance of such rules is prior to our understanding 
of them, even though they remain merely experimental and cannot 
be demonstrated as mathematically true.^ For we have seen that 
the will is of wider application than reason, since it is the affirma- 
tion of all ideas, not of adequate ideas only. Hence for a man to 
wait for adequate ideas of food or the acts of daily life, "as though 
most of our actions were not full of uncertainty or hazard,"' *"' is to 
stultify himself and eventually to perish. Such rules, however, 
though made with the utmost care are not of universal validity, and 
men constantly come into circumstances where no set rules will 
avail.'^ 

The fact that some ideas do correspond to their ideata, even 

* De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 7. 

5 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus ch. XV, p. 197. 

" Loc. cit. 

^ Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, preface, p. 3. 

5 



66 Spinoza as Educator 

though others do not, is Spinoza's cUie to the method of intellec- 
tion. These true ideas are the tools of the mind by the exercise of 
which it forges more and more comprehensive ideas.^ Since, how- 
ever, the idea and its object are but aspects of what is fundamen- 
tally unity, the most comprehensive idea is the idea of the most 
comprehensive object. Hence Spinoza's task resolves itself into 
the quest of such a thing, which he finds in " the union existing 
between the mind and the whole of nature." ^ That the knowl- 
edge of this union cannot be the knowledge of experience or inade- 
quate ideas, is the conclusion reached by Spinoza through four 
steps, the first of which we have already quoted : 

" I. To have an exact knowledge of our nature which we 
desire to perfect, and to know as much as is needful of nature in 
general. 

II. To collect in this way the differences, the agreements, and 
the oppositions of things. 

III. To learn thus exactly how far they can or cannot be 
modified. 

IV. To compare this result with the nature and power of man. 
We shall thus discern the highest degree of perfection to which 
man is capable of attaining. We shall then be in a position to 
see which mode of perception we ought to choose." ^^ 

The exact knowledge of our nature is needed because " by in- 
creased self-knowledge it (the mind) can direct itself more easily 
and lay down rules for its own guidance " ; the necessity for a 
knowledge of nature is stipulated because " by increased knowl- 
edge of nature it can more easily avoid what is useless ";^^ for 
example, those things which depend upon something else may be 
neglected for the study of that upon which they depend. Upon 
this basis Spinoza rejects the first and second orders as methods of 
knowing the union which exists between the mind and the whole 
of nature. Although not expressed in the Tract atus de Intellectus 
Emendationc , the need for the third order of knowing as developed 
in the Ethics and interpreted in the third chapter of this essay is 
here apparent. The first order of knowledge perceives the exist- 
ence of things and gives only an inadequate idea of their nature ; 
the second order attains to a knowledge of essences but because it 

* De Intellectus Emendatione, pp. 12, 14. 
9 Ibid., p. 6. 
1" Ibid., p. 10. 
11 Ibid., p. IS. 



The Criteria of Education 67 

deals with common elements must fail to know particular instances 
of existence. To know that whose essence involves existence, 
causa sui, or substance, appears to call for a kind of knowledge 
which resembles both the other orders but excels them by reason 
of the superiority of that which it knows. 

Such intuitive knowledge is acquired with difficulty, and some 
men never know things in this way. All may, however, acquire a 
rational view of things, and a plan of life based upon such prin- 
ciples is most in accordance with man's nature ^^ and best sub- 
serves that for which the essence of man is striving, namely the 
conquest of that in his environment which checks the development 
of his understanding. We have noted in the second chapter that 
this clash of the conatus with the forces external to man accounts 
for the emotions. Reason is competent to control them and finds 
therein its chief utility. 

The aim of a man's life depends upon his own nature ; it is that 
for which the power that makes him a man strives. The highest 
aim he can entertain or accomplish is the exercise of his intellect. 
The method by which an end or aim is reached is determined by 
that end or aim. In the case of the intellect it is determined by 
what is known. Since it appears that the highest exercise of 
thought is to know itself the criterion of method as well as of aim 
is inherent in human nature. Spinoza has phrased this conclusion 
in a striking passage : 

" All objects of legitimate desire fall, generally speaking, under 
one of these three categories : 

1. The knowledge of things through their primary causes. 

2. The government of the passions, or the acquirement of the 
habit of virtue. 

3. Secure and happy life. 

The means which most directly conduce towards the first two 
of these ends, and which may be considered their proximate and 
efificient causes are contained in human nature itself, so that their 
acquisition hinges only on our own power, and on the laws of 
human nature. It may be concluded that these gifts are not 
peculiar to any nation, but have been always shared by the whole 
human race, unless, indeed, we would indulge the dream that nature 
formerly created men of different kinds. But the means which 
conduce to security and health are chiefly in external circum- 
stance, and are called the gifts of fortune because they depend 
chiefly on objective causes of which we are ignorant ; for a 

i^Tractatus Politicus, ch. V. sec. i. 



68 Spino::a as Educator 

fool may be almost as liable to happiness or unhappiness as a 
wise man. Nevertheless, human management and watchfulness 
can greatly assist towards living in security and warding off the 
injuries of our fellow-men, and even of beasts. Reason and 
experience show no more certain means of attaining this object 
than the formation of a society with fixed laws, the occupation 
of a strip of territory, and the concentration of all forces, as it 
were, into one body, that is the social body." ^^ 

2. The principle that the criterion of method rests in human 
nature is as applicable to the procedure of the instructor as of the 
learner. Hence it is not merely Spinoza's strong predilection for 
the individual ^■^ but a fundamental doctrine of educational process 
that leads him to pronounce the dictum that the teacher has the 
right to choose his own method. ^'^ His are the ideas to be set 
forth, and his the manner of their exposition. For this reason 
" teachers who have their own method, prefer instructing quite 
ignorant people who have never learnt under another master, 
whether the subject be science, languages, or even the indisputable 
truths of mathematics." ^'^ 

This insistence upon the teacher's independence is not incon- 
sistent with the control of education by the state, so long as that 
which is taught is left to the option of the teacher and private in- 
struction is permitted. ^'^ 

The unique and detached character of method when applied to a 
particular situation is also implied in this principle. No two situa- 
tions are identical however many points they may have in common. 
Because they are two situations, the one is not the same as the 
other. Hence the variations of method to meet the exigencies of 
numberless cases must be numberless. This is the philosophical 
justification of that resourcefulness, so desirable in teachers as in 
other skilled operators, which consists in having more than one 
available way of meeting a situation. It is also the justification for 
the selection by an official superior of one out of many equally good 
methods when divers of them would be selected by teachers who 
must work together for a common result. The fact that whatever 
the difficulty of the practical problem, there may be found a method 
for its solution is the possibility held out by the fundamental imity 

^ Tractatus Theologio-Politicus, p. 45. 
JMbid., ch. XVII, p. 232. 
i^Ibid.. ch. XI. p. 162. 
16 Ibid., ch. XI, p. 163. 
"Tractatus PoHticus, p. 369. 



The Criteria of Education 69 

of logical connection and the cansal series. Yet no situation is 
totally unique ; it has elements in common with other situations 
upon which reason may lay hold. Here lies the field of generalized 
methodology. 

It is interesting to study Spinoza's practice as exemplified in the 
structure of his treatises. His approval of the principle of pro- 
ceeding from the known to the unknown may be connected with 
his reliance upon the deductive method as developed in the 
" Treatise on the Improvement of the Intellect." His adoption of 
this principle was conscious and intentional. Upon a foundation 
known and trusted he built for those who accompanied him on his 
argument a viaduct to the sources of his own fresh and invigor- 
ating thought. He says : 

" The nature and efficiency of the natural reason consists in 
deducing and proving the unknown from the known, or in carry- 
ing premises to their legitimate conclusion ; and these are the 
very processes which our method desiderates." ^^ 

He joined one of his earliest lucubrations upon metaphysics to 
Descartes' Principia, which was widely accepted as the last word 
upon philosophy, and showed a way of escape from its dualism and 
subjectivism. Wide as was his divergence from all orthodox 
theology of his day, both Jewish and Christian, he took the Bible 
for his rostrum, and argued against verbal inspiration with texts 
from Scripture. He found in the Tractatiis Theolo^^ico-Politiciis 
and in the Ethics, as well, opportunity to present the dual theme 
which chiefly interested him : " the nature of God, and his manner 
of regarding and providing for men." In the former work the 
Bible was the occasion for discussing the nature of God ; and the 
political status of men in regard to their rulers, gave an opportunity 
to discuss the second problem. So in the Ethics, the first two- 
books deal with the nature of God and man in his eternal rela- 
tions, and the rest of the treatise takes up human affairs. Thus 
the problems that seethed in men's brains during that age of 
religious and political turmoil, gave Spinoza the occasion for his 
ethical instruction as well as for the other doctrines he taught. 
He found in the method of Christ warrant for this procedure, 
inasmuch as the Great Teacher, " accommodated Himself to the 
comprehension of the people " ; ^^ and also in the method of the 

i^Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. VII, p. 113. 
19 Ibid., ch. IV, p. 64. 



70 Spinoca as Educator 

Apostles, who were also teachers, and who "because the Gospel 
was then unknown to mankind, and lest its novelty should offend 
men's ears." ~o " adapted it to the disposition of contemporaries 
(2 Cor. ix, 19, 20), and built upon the groundwork most familiar 
and accepted at the time." 21 

The distinction between experience and reason, as the two forms 
of consciousness, is the basis for Spinoza's classification of educa- 
tional processes. Experience, or knowledge of the first order, is 
the sole source of error. Especially worthy of note is his remark 
that we are never led to doubt anything by that thing itself, but 
always by something else that contradicts it.22 Equally discern- 
ing is his observation, too often neglected in all teaching, that 
" men's natural abilities are too dull to see through everything at 
once ; but by consulting, listening and debating, they grow more 
acute, and while they are trying all means, they at last discover 
those which they want, which all approve, but no one would have 
thought of in the first instance." ^3 

It has become customary in referring to the Ethics to explain 
its long neglect, as in considerable part due to its geometrical form, 
and to describe its style as repellant. Apart from the fact that 
the neglect has extended to those works of Spinoza not cast in 
geometric form, and the further fact that much of the most im- 
portant matter of the Ethics is contained in notes and scholia which 
are but remotely if at all connected with the formal divisions of 
that great w^ork, it may be true that the belief that Spinoza's style 
is one of sustained and soaring eloquence, an opinion shared by 
an increasing number of students, is after all, a matter of taste. 
However that may be, the form of the Ethics was not only deliber- 
ately chosen, but chosen for its effect upon those who should study 
it. Doubtless, Spinoza found the geometric form helpful in main- 
taining his hold upon the pattern of the structure he was erecting. 
For that reason, he deemed the form of presentation best adapted 
to convince those capable of following his thought as he had in the 
Principia of Descartes used the same form to make clear a fabric 
of reasoning to which he did not assent. His views upon this 
subject, as well as upon the method of teaching by an appeal to 
experience, are worth quoting in full. 

^OTractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. XII, p. 171. 

21 Ibid., ch. XI, p. 164. 

22 De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 29. 
23Tractatus Politicus, ch. IX, sec. 14. 



The Criteria of Education 71 

" If anyone wishes to persuade his fellows for or against any- 
thing- which is not self-evident, he must deduce his contention from 
their admissions, and convince them either by experience or by 
ratiocination ; either by appealing to facts of natural experience 
or to self-evident intellectual axioms. Now unless the experi- 
ence be of such a kind as to be clearly and distinctly understood, 
though it may convince a man, it will not have the same efifect 
on his mind and disperse the clouds of his doubt so completely as 
when the doctrine taught is deduced entirely from intellectual 
axioms — that is, by the mere power of the understanding and 
logical order, and this is especially the case in spiritual matters 
which have nothing to do with the senses. 

" But the deduction of conclusions from general truths a priori, 
usually requires a long chain of arguments, and, moreover, very 
great caution, acuteness and self-restraint — qualities which are 
not often met with ; therefore people prefer to be taught by 
experience rather than deduce their conclusions from a few 
axioms, and set them out in logical order. Whence it follows, 
that if anyone wishes to teach a doctrine to a whole nation (not 
to speak of the whole human race), and to be understood by all 
men in every particular, he will seek to support his teaching 
with experience, and will endeavor to suit his reasonings and the 
definitions of his doctrines as far as possible to the understanding 
of the common people, who form the majority of mankind, and 
he will not set them forth in logical sequence nor adduce the 
definitions which serve to establish them. Otherwise he writes 
only for the learned — that is, he w-ill be understood by only a 
small proportion of the human race." '^"^ 

The method of experience, eschewed by Spinoza for reasons 
which he deliberately recognized as sufficient, is that best adapted 
to the popular mind.^^ It is " an appeal to the memory, a recalling 
of something similar which is ordinarily regarded without wonder ; 
for most people think they sufficiently understand a thing when 
they have ceased to wonder at it." -"^ But such teaching, especially 
when imposed by authority in the form of precepts merely accepted 
and not understood, is fatal to thought. It " so clogs men's minds 
with dogmatic formulas that it leaves no room for sound reason, 
not even enough to doubt with. "27 The memory deals with words 
and symbols which are modifications of the body. " A matter is 
understood when it is perceived simply by the mind without words 

-■* Tractatus Thcologico-PoHticus, ch. V, p. "jy. 

25 Ibid., ch. XIII, p. 175. 

26 Ibid., ch. VI, p. 84. 
^ Ibid, preface, p. 5. 



72 Spinoza as Educator 

or symbols." ^^ Hence from adequate ideas is derived the pos- 
sibility of true paraphrase, or the expression of the idea in different 
symbols from those in which it is expressed at another time. 

Ill 

Anything upon which man may exercise his activities is inckided 
in the subject matter of education. Its range is as universal as 
reality and includes whatever may be the object of thought, but is 
not all of equal value. The first requisite of a curriculum is the 
establishment of criteria according to which the most fundamental 
exercises may be discovered. We have seen on page 65 that 
Spinoza accorded priority to two items of experience, (i) social 
intercourse, and (2) preservation of life and health. These then 
would be the bases of his curriculum. In the second chapter, 
Spinoza's thoughts upon the second criterion were presented at 
length, and largely in his own words ; so it suffices to note in this 
place that recreation is made the medium for the preservation of 
health, an ideal to which the theory of physical culture has long 
been approaching. Whether proper recreation can be had in soli- 
tude is a question upon which we need not enter, for as a matter 
of fact recreation is largely games and entertainments in which 
several or many persons participate. The ideal of personal economy 
which is set at the acquirement of sufficient means to preserve life 
and health has such distinctly social implications as to make 
Spinoza's basic criteria for studies preponderatingly if not ex- 
clusively social. 

In respect to social relations Spinoza itemizes five things for a 
man to acquire : ( i ) Ability to associate with people ; which neces- 
sitates (2) acquirement of language, (3) earning a living, and (4) 
conformity with custom; and which may be utilized in (5) social 
service. The ability to " get on " with people, the possession of 
tact, culture in the narrow sense, political ability, the gift of 
managing and leading one's fellow men are implied in the first 
desideratum. The importance of ability to communicate can not 
be questioned ; hardly less important in this connection is the out- 
ward conformity with custom, — when in Rome, doing as the 
Romans do, — which is evidence of a common nature and purpose. 
Objection may however be made that Spinoza minimizes in this 
statement as in his life the importance of developing industrial 

28 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. IV, p. 64. 



The Criteria of Education 73 

ability. Although his parents were well-to-do and intended to edu- 
cate him as a rabbi, he nevertheless was taught in accordance with 
Hebrew custom, a handicraft, — the making of lenses. From the 
standpoint of the tremendous economic advance which has been 
made since the seventeenth century, and which is to all appear- 
ances still far short of its climax, there is ground for the objection ; 
but if the anticipation be correct that the outcome of the mechaniz- 
ing of occupations shall be fewer hours devoted to the world's 
labor, and the exchange of special skill for the ability to tend a 
machine in which the product may indeed be highly specialized but 
the manual skill needed will be of'the most general kind; in that 
event, future centuries may witness the realization of industrial 
conditions in which Spinoza's ideal as to the place of vocations in 
life may find acceptance. 

It is as an element of the social environment that the teacher 
finds justification. In the provisional plan of life which is the 
basis for participation in social exercise, Spinoza vouchsafes no 
direct recognition to the non-human environment. This is be- 
cause in a majority of instances and for most men, especially the 
immature, this part of the environment is mediated by their fellow 
men. Surrounded as he is by forces u^hich may overpower him, 
we have noted above, that among these surroundings which he can 
conquer only by understanding them, man finds that which under- 
stands him. Thus through the co-operation of other men and 
never by his unaided efforts he learns to know the non-human and 
also the human, including himself. Civilization develops the 
functions of worship, government, industry and the like, which 
inhere in society because they are properties of human nature, and 
assigns them to special institutions. The same thing happens 
with education. The teacher is that person to whom is delegated 
by reason of special fitness for the task, that function of society, 
which consists in aiding men to exercise their power rationally. 
In a sense the teacher is the curriculum. Because he understands 
the learner and their common environment he is able to interpret 
and direct their interaction. He may arrange and divide per- 
formances, and may devise more or less artificial problems, but his 
criterion which summarizes the three stated earlier in this section 
is the fact that man is a member of society. 

We have noted that the knowledge of experience cannot make 
a man completely conscious of himself, or in other words, cannot 



74 Spinoza as Educator 

enable him to bring his environment into harmony with himself by 
understanding the union which exists between the mind and the 
whole of nature. Hence Spinoza's philosophy requires an addi- 
tion to the curriculum of experience, namely, exercises in reason- 
ing. Independent of agreement with Spinoza's theory of ideas or 
his predilection for deductive thinking, the importance of training 
in scientific thinking as opposed to common sense, may be acknowl- 
edged as being, next to social participation, the most important 
requirement of education. Indeed man cannot attain to a com- 
plete realization of his obligations and privileges in society without 
excelling in the higher type of thinking. Even experience and 
that which it knows must give account to reason. The recognition 
by Spinoza of the utility of experience before we understand its 
special instances, is due to a rational study of the nature of experi- 
ence. A further addition to the curriculum, at which Spinoza's 
philosophy hints but does not emphasize, is the sphere of fine art. 
His interests were frankly not in that field, but his study of the 
emotions includes a distinct recognition of the propriety and value 
of the pleasure of actions as contrasted with passions. The ex- 
hilaration which arises from harmony with one's surroundings 
may properly include the enjoyment of creating and contemplating 
aesthetic objects. 

In concluding our consideration of the implications of Spinoza's 
philosophy with respect to method, it is pertinent to state his atti- 
tude with respect to such conventional studies as he has occasion 
to mention. Such a presentation, being based on detached com- 
ments, is of course fragmentary. Spinoza's preference for mathe- 
matical studies is due to their apodictic character. The geometric 
method, exemplifying the deductive method and the simplicity of 
mathematical ideas, appealed to him. From mathematics he drew 
his two most frequently used illustrations, that of the triangle and 
its law to show the irresistible force of thought, and that of four 
proportionals, employed to demonstrate that the same conclusion 
may be reached in dififerent ways, according to the ascending 
orders of knowing. 

The study of nature " consists in the examination of the history 
of nature, and therefrom deducing definitions of natural phenom- 
ena on certain fixed axioms." ^9 It is from Spinoza's consistent 
observance of this method that we are warranted in calling him a 

29Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. VII, p. 99. 



The Criteria of Education 75 

realist and an experimental philosopher. He rested " assured that 
God directs nature according to the requirements of universal 
laws, .... and that, therefore, God's scheme comprehends, 
not only the human race, but the whole of nature." 2'* His prefer- 
ence was for the essence of things, for definitions and proximate 
causes ; hence in the study of nature he looked for what is uni- 
versal, but the discovery was not so much by induction as by in- 
sight. He began with motion and rest and their laws and pro- 
ceeded to what is less universal.^ ^ This tendency was accentuated 
by the ethical nature of his problem, in the solution of which 
incidents were nothing ; laws, everything. Partial aspects, though 
worthy of being understood, had nothing to tell him of the whole 
of nature which he needed to understand in order to conclude that 
man had to obey the laws of nature, not the reverse. Though he 
recognized an order or system in the cosmos, he believed it to 
be incomprehensible to man except as a w^iole ; its ramifications 
were too great, in fact, numberless, for a man to know them except 
in part, yet no specific part need elude his investigations, if he be 
sufficiently skilled to wrest her mystery piecemeal from the Sphynx. 
History had interest for Spinoza chiefly as a phenomenon whose 
nature he wanted to fathom. Historical knowledge has a peculiar 
utility which he appraised as follows : 

" I do not deny that reading histories is very useful with a view 
to life in the world, for the more we have observed and known of 
men's customs and circumstances which are revealed by their ac- 
tions, the more warily we shall be able to order our lives among 
them." ^2 

This knowledge, though of the first order, has its use and is in- 
dispensable, but it can never give rational knowledge.^^ The per- 
sonal bias of the historian is moreover sure to color his account 
of any event and thus the possibility of error is increased.^^ 

The remarkable skill with which Spinoza formulated and applied 
the method of the higher criticism called down upon him the wrath 
of contemporary theologians. It indicates the advanced quality 
of his literary studies. His catholicity of taste, his toleration, 
and the high standard of his literary ideals appear from his ap- 

30Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. ch. VI, p. 88. 

•"i Ibid., ch. VII. p. 104. 

?2 Ibid., ch. IV, p. 61 ; cf. Correspondence, letter XXVIII. 

'^Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. V, p. 78; ibid., ch. XI, p. 162. 

wjbid., ch. VI. p. 92 



y^ Spinoza as Educator 

preciation of the best literature irrespective of authorship or na- 
tionahty, a Uberality to which his mother tongue, the Spanish, his 
adopted speech, the Dutch, and his knowledge of Hebrew and 
Latin contributed. 

" The books which teach and speak of whatever is highest and 
best are equally sacred, whatever be the tongue in which they are 
written, or the nation to which they belong." ^^ 

The great seventh chapter of the Theological-Political Treatise, 
" Of the Interpretation of Scripture," is one of the most sug- 
gestive essays for teachers of literature extant. It develops a 
special method for the study of a literary masterpiece. The 
method is applied to the Bible, but may be adapted, mntatus 
mutandis, to any literary work. The study should be based, ac- 
cording to Spinoza, on (i) the nature of the language in which 
the work is written; (2) an analysis of the book and its topics, 
with detection of ambiguities and obscurities; (3) the life, con- 
duct, and studies of the author ; the occasion for the production, 
the character of the people for whom the work was written, and 
the epoch of its publication. 

Spinoza recognized the imaginative as well as the rational type 
of mind ^^ and understood that whatever flights the imagination 
might take were proof of its efficiency. So far as its culture, 
which however can give us but " dreams and phantoms," ^'' is 
desired, reason must intervene to give an understanding of th^ 
nature of imagination and how to train it. 

IV 

We have found that the criteria of education implied in Spinoza's 
philosophy are contained in human nature itself. The end for 
which man is to be educated is that he may exercise his power 
to the utmost. The end determines the method, and the method 
regulates the subject matter. We have noted also that human 
essence is not confined to a single person, but is common to all 
men. The human nature in which the criteria of education in- 
here, is not personal but social. Upon applying these conclusions 
to the concept of discipline, it is evident that the directive prin- 
ciple cannot be extraneous to human nature but is resident 

35 Ibid., ch. X, p. 150. 

36 Ibid., ch. II, p. 27. 

37 Ibid., ch. XV, p. 195- 



The Criteria of Education yj 

within the activity or conatus which constitutes the essence of 
man. Man is self-active. 

Spinoza's major interest was in conduct. It was the reason 
for his philosophising, and it is not by accident that in civics and 
ethics we find him developing and applying his philosophy. One 
may smile at the detailed projects for an ideal state which appear 
in the uncompleted " Political Treatise," but they are no more 
visionary than those planned by other philosophers from Plato on. 
The adviser of John De Witt was sound in his political theory, and 
we have no reason to doubt that had political duties fallen to his 
lot he would have carried out adroitly the maxims, strongly re- 
sembling those of Machiavelli, which came so copiously to his 
mind. But we may be sure that his manipulation of men 
would never have sunk to selfish exploitation, for the fundamental 
dictum of his political creed is as patriotic as it is practical : " It 
is certain that duties towards one's country are the highest that 
man can fulfil." ^^ 

In the conception of gcncrositas, an active emotion, not a 
passion, and defined as "the desire whereby every man endeavors 
solely under the dictates of reason, to aid other men, and unite 
them to himself in friendship," ^^ the social instinct is seen to 
be an essential exercise of human activity. This insistence upon 
the integrity of society is strong in Spinoza, and finds constant 
application, a few instances of which may be noted. The good 
citizen not only obeys the laws himself, even though they go 
counter to his personal convictions, but insists upon their execu- 
tion upon all violators, " not for the sake of vengeance, but in 
order to defend justice and his country's laws." Fie noted that 
" the love of Hebrews for their cotmtry was not only patriotism, 
but also piety," and such a combination appealed to him as a prac- 
tical device of administration ; but he was too rational and broad- 
minded to believe that God's approval was restricted to a single 
chosen people, save in a definitely limited and comparatively un- 
important sense. " In regard to intellect and true virtue, every 
nation is on a par with the rest." ^^ 

Since the principle of control is native to man's nature, the true 
benefits of a virtuous life are not external. " Blessedness is not 

38Tractatus Theoloj^ico-Politicus, ch. XIX, p. 249. 

33 Ethics, pt. Ill, prop. 59, note. 

^"Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. Ill, p. 56. 



78 Spinoza as Educator 

the reward of virtue, but virtue itself," is the final proposition 
of the Ethics. Temperance, sobriety, chastity, presence of mind 
in danger, and the like are not passions, but active or rational 
emotions grouped under the general designation, animositas^^ 
They are more than the absence of the contrary vices, as peace 
is not mere absence of war.^s Virtue is positive, being nothing 
less than the power or essence of man. This identity of right- 
eousness with man's nature crops out throughout Spinoza's writ- 
ings, in his analysis of the Hebrew prophets, for example. Their 
chief claim to the confidence of those they addressed was the 
fact that they had minds turned to what is just and right.*^ 
This virtuous character of human nature accounts for the attempt 
of every one to excuse any base act he has committed."*^ Hence 
" it is no accidental coincidence that the Word of God which we 
find in the prophets coincides with the Word of God written in 
our hearts." •*'• Spinoza had nothing but pity and scorn for 
those who entertained an opposite view. 

" Most people seem to believe that they are free, in so far as 
they may obey their lusts, and that they cede their rights in so 
far as they are bound to live according to the commandments of 
the divine law. They therefore believe that piety, religion, and 
generally, all things attributable to firnmess of mind, are burdens, 
which after death, they hope to lay aside, and to receive the reward 
for their bondage, that is for their piety and religion ; it is not only 
by this hope, but also, and chiefly, by the fear of being horribly 
punished after death, that they are induced to live according to the 
divine commandments, so far as their feeble and infirm spirit will 
carry them." "*'' 

The attitude of society towards those who, for whatever reason, 
ofifend against the moral order, is determined by a consideration 
of their place in the cosmos. The light of reason reveals the 
wrong-doer as inextricably bound in the causal chain. Whatever 
emotion or desire the spectacle arouses, the fact remains that bad 
men are to be feared and good men, loved, and that the necessary 
character of their deeds fixes the firmer our conviction that it is 
by God's decree that the good prosper and the wicked come to 

« Ethics, loc. cit. 

■*2 Tractatus Politicus, ch. V, sec. 4. 

*^Tractatus Theologico-Politiciis, ch. XV, p. 196. 

«Ibid., ch. XII, p. 173- 

« Ibid., ch. XV. p. 197. 

*6 Ethics, pt. V, prop. 41, note. 



The Criteria of Education 79 

ridught. Reason therefore dictates no sentimental attitude. 
Wicked men, who are diseases of the body poHtic, must be treated 
as a surg-eon treats pathological conditions of the human frame; 
cured if they may be, excised when they must. 

Character training may be based on insight into the principles 
which we have adduced, or it may be carried on by rule. The 
same test that applies to reason and experience in forming a plan 
of life, applies here. If a man should wait to understand the 
reason for every virtuous act, many would die before they had 
attained to that intellectual ability. For that reason Spinoza ad- 
vises the regulation of conduct by rote. His words are given in 
full : 

" The best we can do, so long as we do not possess a perfect 
knowledge of our emotions, is to frame a system of right conduct, 
or fixed practical precepts, to commit it to memory, and to apply 
It forthwith to the particular circumstances which now and again 
meet us in life, so that our imagination may become fully imbued 
therewith, and that it may be always ready to our hand. For in- 
stance, we have laid down among the rules of life (IV, xlv ; and 
note) that hatred should be overcome with love or high-minded- 
ness, and not requited with hatred in return. Now, that this pre- 
cept of reason may be always ready to our hand in time of need, 
we should often think over and reflect upon the wrongs generally 
committed by men, and in what manner and way they may best be 
warded off by high-mindedness : we shall thus associate the idea of 
wrong with the idea of this precept, which accordingly will always 
be ready for use when a wrong is done to us. (II, xviii). If we 
keep also in readiness the notion of our true advantage, and of the 
good which follow^s from mutual friendships, and common fellow- 
ships ; further if we remember that complete acquiescence is the re- 
sult of the right way of life (IV, Hi), and that men, no less than 
everything else, act by the necessity of their nature : in such case I 
say the wrong, or the hatred, which commonly arises therefrom 
\\\\\ engross a very small part of our imagination and will be easily 
overcome; or if the anger which spring from a grievous wrong be 
not overcome easily, it will nevertheless be overcome, though not 
without a spiritual conflict, far sooner than if we had not thus re- 
flected on the subject beforehand. As is indeed evident from 
V, vi, vii, viii. We should in the same way, reflect on courage as 
a means of overcoming fear ; the ordinary dangers of life should be 
brought to mind and imagined, together with the means whereby 
through readiness of resource and strength of mind we can avoid 
and overcome them. But we must note, that in arranging our 



8o Spino::;a as Educator 

thoiig-hts and conceptions we should always bear in mind that 
which is good in every individual thing (IV, Ixiii, Corol. and III, 
lix), in order that we may always be determined to action by an 
emotion of pleasure. For instance, if a man sees that he is too keen 
in the pursuit of honor, let him think over its right use, the end for 
which it should be pursued, and the means whereby he may attain 
it. Let him not think of its misuse, and its emptiness, and the 
fickleness of mankind, and the like, whereof no man thinks except 
through a morbidness of disposition ; with thoughts like these do 
the most ambitious most torment themselves when they despair of 
gaining the distinctions they hanker after, and in thus giving vent 
to their anger would fain appear wise. Wherefore it is certain that 
those, who cry out the loudest against the misuse of honor and the 
vanity of the world, are those who most greedily covet it. This is 
not peculiar to the ambitious, but is common to all who are ill-used 

by fortune, and who are infirm in spirit 

Thus he who would govern his emotions and appetite solely by the 
love of freedom strives, as far as he can, to gain a knowledge of the 
virtues and their causes, and to fill his spirit with the joy which 
arises from the true knowledge of them : he will in no wise desire 
to dwell on men's faults or* carp at his fellows, or to revel in a 
false show of freedom. Whosoever will diligently observe and 
practice these precepts (which indeed are not difficult) will verily, 
in a short space of time, be able, for the most part, to direct his 
actions according to the commandments of reason." ^^^ 

Lofty as is the ideal here proposed, it represents doubtless 
the result of personal experience. The noble introduction to the 
" Treatise on the Improvement of the Intellect," recounts some 
such spiritual conflict as this. Yet this, although it is deemed a 
practical method of training character, and " not difficult " is not 
the ultimate development possessed by " the wise man, in so far 
as he is regarded to be such." who 

^ " Is scarcely at all disturbed in spirit, but being conscious of 
himself, and of God. and of things, by a certain eternal necessity, 
never ceases to be, but always possesses true acquiescence of his 
spirit." -^s 

There is nothing to prevent a man from adopting another 
man's plan of life, or his method of discipline. He may accept it 
because experience has led him to trust the other man as a safe 
guide, or he may understand the plan prepared by the other 

*'' Ethics, pt. V, prop. lo, note. 
^^Ibid., pt. IV, prop. 42, note. 



The Criteria of Education 8i 

man."*^ A plan of life may be imposed upon one person by another 
who is stronger, as upon a pupil by a teacher, but we have seen 
that such a course is inimical to the interests of both ; for the 
activity of the person who is controlled is checked and he is no 
long-er himself, but a captive, a part, as it were, of his master ; and 
the master also suffers in that he exchanges the co-operation of a 
fellow man for the services of a slave. He loses the better parts 
of the person whom he subordinates ; namely, initiative, which 
might suggest to him projects of which he may not think himself, 
and independence, which might contribute more to his success 
than anything he can own. For an equal can confer greater 
benefits than an inferior and in so far as a man controls the 
human sources that supply him he robs himself of their chief 
utility. Spinoza recognizes differences in such involuntary or 
unavoidable obedience to authority imposed from without. 

" A slave is one who is bound to obey his master's orders, though 
they are given solely in the master's interest ; a son is one who 
obeys his father's orders, given in his own interest ; a subject obeys 
the orders of the sovereign power, given for the common interest, 
wherein he is included.'' ^" 

This distinction seems superficial for " it is the fact of obedience, 
not the motive for obedience which makes a man a subject." ^^ 
Whatever be the cause, so long as it is not reason which leads a 
man to obey, his obedience is always in accordance with the rights 
of the ruler and not of the individual. 

" This fact is made still more clear by the fact that obedience 
does not consist so much in the outward act as in the mental state 
of the person obeying ; so that he is most under the dominion of 
another who with his whole heart determines to obey another's 
commands." ^^ 

The outward act is the same whether fear, affection, or an 
insight into the reason for the requirement leads to compliance ; but 
in the former instances, the obedience is a passion, inasmuch as a 
modification of the servant's body by his environment is concerned 
therein. Such control may be lifelong and may never be recog- 
nized as objectional. The subject's " whole life becomes one long 

^^Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. IV, p. 58. 
50 Ibid., ch. XVI, p. 206. 
"Ibid., ch. XVIT, p. 215 

^^Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. XVII, p. 215. 
6 



82 Spinosa as Educator 

school of obedience ; sach habits are thus engendered, that con- 
formity seems freedom instead of servitude, and men desire what 
is commanded rather than what is forbidden." ^^ 

But though the yoke be easy, Spinoza would not call that 
teaching which elicits the performance of deeds as acts of obedi- 
ence. The legislator imposes laws but the teacher lifts men out 
of the realms of legislation into the regions where they shall know 
the truth and the truth shall make them free. For this very 
reason Spinoza regarded Christ as the typical teacher. 

" He did not ordain laws as a legislator, but inculcated precepts 
as a teacher ; inasmuch as he did not aim at correcting outward 
actions so much as the frame of mind." ^■* 

Since it is the office of reason to liberate man from the bondage 
to the emotions, the Fifth Book of the Ethics is entitled " Of 
Human Freedom." " He alone is free who lives with free con- 
sent under the entire guidance of reason." ^^ 

If men were born to the full panoply of reason, or if it were 
man's nature to attain thereto, merely as the result of living a 
given number of years, human life and education would be very 
different. Man is born a weakling, and when at his strongest is 
encompassed by powers which infinitely surpass his. Before he 
can attain to a rational understanding many years of his life are 
spent, and his neighbors who for their common protection must 
aid him in the struggle in which they too are engaged cannot 
abide inactive nor neglect him while they attempt to increase his 
consciousness. " This is the task and this the toil." Those who, 
like the teacher, are made responsible for the government of men, 
aware of the fact that few men attain to what lofty station where 
all or even most of their acts are guided by reason,^^ and yet 
charged with the duty of so arranging society as to secure the 
co-operation or at least the compliance of all its members, must 
needs study the art of external control. Fear and hope are com- 
mon means resorted to. Of these, hope is preferable because 
fear counteracts the activity of the one controlled, whereas hope 
supplements it, though not rationally.^^ The means of control 

53 Ibid., ch. XVII, p. 231. 

54 Ibid. 

55 Ibid., ch. XVI, p. 206. 

5« Ibid., ch. XVI, p. 204 ; cf. Tractatus-Politicus, ch. II, sec. 8. 
s^Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. V. p. 75; cf. Tractatus Politicus, 
£h. VIII. sec. 8. 



The Criteria of Education ^t^ 

when too harsh react to the cHsad vantage of the governor, hence 
a mild rule is more successful than a tyrannical one. The best 
means of influencing men's minds aside from reason, whereby a 
mind influences itself, is joy, springing from devotion. ^^ From 
these examples it appears that the means of control are but the 
causes which have been observed to produce effects. ^^ Such means 
of control as those mentioned above are not resident in human 
nature solely, but represent its interaction with its environment, 
but the criterion specified for the selection is that they shall co- 
operate with the conatiis. That he who cannot govern himself 
will not advantageously control others is obvious, for if he is 
ignorant of the effect of a cause upon himself, he will find it 
difficult if not impossible to direct its operation upon some one 
else. 

Education to deserve the name must be self-education. Others 
can chain us in experience against our will or with our co-opera- 
tion, but reason and insight, though they also involve co-operation, 
must be the exercise of human energy self-initiated and self- 
controlled. " All who listen to philosophers become philoso- 
phers," "0 is no mere statement of the influence of imitation. It 
expresses the mutual intercourse of society wherein the active 
human essence exercises itself in teacher and learner to the con- 
sequent development of both. 



In spite of the simplicity and regularity of his life, Spinoza's 
labors came to an early end. His was as untimely a death for a 
philosopher, as was the death of Keats for a poet. The resem- 
blance extends beyond the fact that each inherited consumption 
from his mother, Spinoza, like Keats, had a countenance of spiritual 
yet manly beauty ; each had a mind of Grecian quality, and the 
Ethics, like the Endymion, is too securely the evidence of genius 
to be hampered by occasional faults of immaturity and uncertain 
execution. The eloquent apologia which opens the Tractatus de 
Intcllectus Emendatione shows that Spinoza pursued philosophy 
to free himself from perturbation of mind. Having found the 
way he sought to guide others to a goal more excellent than the 

58 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. XVIT, p. 231. 

59 Ibid., ch. VI, p. 89. 
"•Ibid., ch. I, note, 2. 



84 Spinoza as Educator 

possession of fame, riches, or pleasure, and to the achievement of 
which they could contribute. 

Education, according to Spinoza's philosophy, must be under- 
stood and estimated through the study of human nature. This 
entity as existent appears as an active principle exerting itself not 
in one but in an indefinite number of persons, determined by the 
conditions of their existence to numberless degrees of efficiency. 
Sub species etertiitate we may formulate the criteria of education 
solely in terms of humam nature, but the application of these 
criteria to specific individuals must ever be a specific problem, 
resembling all problems of education, yet dififerentiated from every 
other problem by peculiar elements which distinguish its existence. 

" The general consideration of fate and the concatenation of 
causes aids us very little in forming and arranging our ideas con- 
cerning particular questions." ^'^ 

In this sense we answer the initial question of this essay in the 
affirmative, understanding " possible " to mean contingent upon the 
knowledge and presence of such causes, as are needed to produce 
a result. 

As a process which affects every member of society and which 
makes every man responsible not only for his own development but 
for that of his neighbor, education is the prerogative of govern- 
ment.*'- Yet its administration fails if not so conducted as to win 
adherence through an understanding of the nature of the process 
and its value at once altruistic and personal due to the nature of 
human beings and the conditions under which they exist. 

In conclusion, several passages which summarize Spinoza's con- 
ception of education may be cited. 

"All men are born ignorant of the causes of things, all have 
the desire to seek for what is useful to them, and they are con- 
scious of such desire." "^ 

The chief law of that activity in which this human desire 
manifests itself is his choice of the greater of two goods and th6 
less of two evils.*'^ This comparison of stimuli is postulated 
upon his membership in society and is the dictate of reason.^ ^ 

^1 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. IV, p. 58. 
62 Ibid., ch. XVIII, p. 238. 
^^ Ethics, pt. I, appendix. 

6* Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. XVI, p. 203. 

65 Tractatus Politicus, ch. Ill, sec. 7; cf. Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 
ch. XVI, p. 205. 



The Criteria of Education 85 

" All men are born ignorant and before they can learn the 
right way of life and acquire the habit of virtue, the greater part 
of their life, even if they have been well brought up, has passed 
away." '^'^ 

This fact is not to be accepted pessimistically, but with acquies- 
cence in the infinite and inevitable laws of nature to which man 
belongs. 

" We see that no one pities an infant, because it cannot speak, 
w^alk, or reason, or lastly, because it passes so many years as it 
were, in unconsciousness. Whereas, if most people were born 
full-grown and only one here and there as an infant, everyone 
would pity the infant ; because infancy would not then be looked 
on as a state natural and necessary, but as a fault or delinquency 
in Nature." *^" 

The reason for optimism lies in the fact that the infant does 
not remain one, but by the exercise of its infantile powers may 
grow to the full stature of the adult. 

" In this life, therefore, we primarily endeavor to bring it about, 
that the body of a child, in so far as its nature allows and cpnduces 
thereto, may be changed into something else capable of very many 
activities, and referable to a mind which is highly conscious of it- 
self, of God, and of things ; and we desire so to change it, that 
what is referred to its imagination and memory may become in- 
significant, in comparison with its intellect." °^ 

Inasmuch as this process and result cannot, as has been shown, 
be carried to a successful issue save by the co-operation of the 
person who is to share with his teacher and fellow men the benefits 
that accrue, we may finally quote a sentence which may serve as 
the autobiography in little of Spinoza's remarkable life ; a sentence 
all the more impressive and worthy to be pondered because it is 
addressed to Blyenbergh, whom Spinoza gave up trying to educate 
for lack of a common ground on which they could co-operate. 

" If in any instance I found that a result obtained through my 
natural understanding was false I should reckon myself fortunate, 
for I enjoy life, and try to spend it not in sorrow and sighing, but 
in peace, joy, and cheerfulness, ascending from time to time a step 
higher. Meanwhile I know (and this knowledge gives me the 
highest contentment and peace of mind) that all things come to 
pass by the power and unchangeable decree of a Being supremely 
perfect." "^ 

^Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. XVI, p. 201. 

^^ Ethics, pt. V, prop. 6, note. 

^ Ibid., pt. V, prop. 39, note. 

^3 Correspondence, letter XXXIV, p. 337- 



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